Abstract
Cadmium (Cd) is a non-essential metal highly toxic to plants, animals, and humans. To understand the heritability of Cd tolerance in Medicago truncatula, a QTL analysis was performed using a population of 147 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) in the F8 generation at seedling stage. The RILs and parental lines were grown for 6 days under exposure to ± 15 µM Cd on water agar. Length, diameter, fresh weight, and dry weight of root, as well as fresh weight and dry weight of aerial parts, were measured. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis was performed with the parameters root length and fresh leaf weight using simple and composite interval mapping. Cd significantly decreased root length. One QTL for Cd response was mapped to chromosome 8 with root length which explained 9.35% of the phenotypic variance. Another QTL was identified for fresh leaf weight under Cd stress on chromosome 7. Genotype effect was highly significant for fresh leaf weight, fresh root weight, and dry leaf weight. Ten among the most susceptible and the most tolerant lines were pooled respectively to analyze the expression of genes encoding glutathione reductase (GR), glutathione S-transferase (GST), superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (PRX), and M. truncatula MonoSaccharide Transporter1. Expression of GR, GST, MST1, PRX, and SOD was upregulated after 24 h in the susceptible pool, then returned to basic levels. Expression of GR, GST, and PRX in the tolerant pool was upregulated after 96 h only, while MST1 and SOD exhibited no change at any time.
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Abbreviations
- ANOVA:
-
Analysis of variance
- APX:
-
Ascorbate peroxidase
- CAT:
-
Catalase
- Cd:
-
Cadmium
- CIM:
-
Composite interval mapping
- DLW:
-
Dry leaf weight
- DRW:
-
Dry root weight
- EF1:
-
Elongation factor 1
- FLW:
-
Fresh leaf weight
- FRW:
-
Fresh root weight
- GPX:
-
Glutathione peroxidase
- GR :
-
Glutathione reductase
- GSH:
-
Glutathione
- GSH:
-
Glutathione
- GST :
-
Glutathione S-transferase
- H2O2 :
-
Hydrogen peroxide
- H3L:
-
Core histone
- IMP:
-
Multiple imputation
- LOD:
-
Logarithm of odds
- LSMEANS:
-
The least-square means
- MR:
-
Marker regression
- MSTs:
-
Monosaccharide transporters
- MtMST1 :
-
M. truncatula MonoSaccharide Transporter
- O2 − :
-
Superoxide
- .OH:
-
Hydroxyl radical
- PCs:
-
Phytochelatins
- PRX :
-
Peroxidase
- QTL:
-
Quantitative trait locus
- RILs:
-
Recombinant inbred lines
- ROS:
-
Reactive oxygen species
- SIM:
-
Simple interval mapping
- SOD :
-
Superoxide dismutase
- SSRs:
-
Simple sequence repeat
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dr. Laurent Gentzbittel (Laboratoire Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement), Prof. Karl Broman (Department of Biostatistics & Medical informatics, research in statistical genetics; developer of R/qtl and R/qtl2 for R) and Dr. Amirhossein Fartash for helpful discussions and Annick Corrège (Laboratoire Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement) for efficient help with administrative problems. They also thank M. Bonté and Ms Mirbaha (French Embassy Teheran) for their kind assistance during the Covid crisis.
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This work was supported by the French government under PhD grant number 956802F.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and analysis. Experiments and data analysis were performed by ZP, A first draft of the mnuscript was written by ZP and all authors commented on the previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Pakbaz, Z., Ebrahimi, A., Ben, C. et al. Genetic control and molecular responses of Medicago truncatula to cadmium stress. Euphytica 219, 84 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-023-03200-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-023-03200-6