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Genetic analysis of reproductive, vegetative and fruit quality traits to improve Citrus varieties

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Abstract

To extend the harvesting period of high quality seedless fruits in citrus variety breeding programs, 20 traits related to vegetative growth (2), sexual reproduction (5), and fruit quality (13) were genetically studied in a segregating population of hybrids derived from a reciprocal cross between two commercial varieties, Fortune (a Citrus clementina hybrid) and Chandler (a Citrus grandis hybrid) that largely differ in fruit size, taste, color, and harvesting date. Juice and fruit colors and tritable acidity showed a highly significant cytoplasm x harvest interaction where Fortune cytoplasm was associated with higher means of those parameters for the first and second harvests only. Type of cytoplasm was also associated with fruit seeds content and heterostyly of flowers. Very few hybrids (11.3 %) were self-compatible, and less than one fourth of the progeny showed parthenocarpic ability. Two Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) governing flower heterostyly and self-compatibility were found linked in group 3 of C. clementina where segregation distortion had been previously reported. Only two major QTLs were consistently detected for fruit quality traits, one in the C. clementina map contributing up to 21.3 % to rind thickness and another in the C. grandis map contributing up to 59.7 % to tritable acidity at the optimal maturing harvest. Unexpectedly, soluble-solids content and seed number of the fruit were positively and consistently correlated in the progeny what could be explained by linkage of some QTLs involved. Present information on the positions of 68 QTLs detected will be useful to search for candidate genes at the peak regions.

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Acknowledgments

This long-lasting work has been partially supported by grants AGL2002-02395, RTA2006-0009-00-00, AGL2008-00197/AGR, RTA2011-00132-C02 from the Spanish Goverment (Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad), GVPRE/2008/050 from Generalitat Valenciana and Fondo Social Europeo (GPB). Authors thank Mr. J. Puchades, Dr. Alida Ballester and Mrs Débora Millán for the technical assistance.

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Correspondence to M. J. Asins.

Additional information

Communicated by C. Chen

Data archiving statement

The SSR primer sequences are available upon request from http://www.ivia.es/deps/biot/labgen/request.html. The genetic linkage maps have been submitted to the Citrus Genome Database (https://www.citrusgenomedb.org/). The parents of the progeny are kept at the Citrus Germplasm Bank and the accession references are as follows: IVIA-80 (Fortune) and IVIA-207 (Chandler).

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Breeding

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ESM 1

Trait means used for correlation and QTL analyses: seed number (SN), fruit weight (FW), rind thickness (RT), fruit diameter (FD), fruit color (cF), juice volume (JV), juice color (cJ), juice content (JC), acidity (Ac), soluble solids content (SSC), index of maturation (SSC/A), optimal-maturity harvest date (HM), number of harvests maintaining maturity (NH), leaf area (LA), length of thorns (LT), heterostyly (H), self-compatibility (SC), parthenocarpy (Pa), incidence of non-style flowers (NSF) and mean seed number under open-pollination (SNop) during the evaluation of self-compatibility and parthernocarpy abilities (PDF 44 kb)

ESM 2

Significant (p < 0.025) trait correlations. Between year correlations suggesting trait stability in bold. Consistent trait correlations in yellow (positive) or blue (negative). Trait codes are: seed number (SN), fruit weight (FW), rind thickness (RT), fruit diameter (FD), fruit color (cF), juice volume (JV), juice color (cJ), juice content (JC), acidity (Ac), soluble solids content (SSC), index of maturation (SSC/A), optimal-maturity harvest date (HM), number of harvests maintaining maturity (NH), leaf area (LA) and mean seed number under open-pollination (SNop) during the evaluation of self-compatibility and parthernocarpy abilities (PDF 25 kb)

ESM 3

List of significant trait-locus associations and corresponding genotypic means depending on the genome where they were detected: Fortune (F: nn and np), Chandler (Ch: ll and lm), cytoplasmic organelle (Cyto.: ll, Fortune and lm, Chandler), or both parents (Ch + F: ac, ad, bc, and bd, or ee, ef, eg and fg). Markers in bold correspond to QTLs detected by MQM. K is the Kruskal-Wallis statistic provided by MapQTL 6 software. Trait codes are: seed number (SN), fruit weight (FW), rind thickness (RT), fruit diameter (FD), fruit color (cF), juice volume (JV), juice color (cJ), juice content (JC), acidity (Ac), soluble solids content (SSC), index of maturation (SSC/A), optimal-maturity harvest date (HM), number of harvests maintaining maturity (NH), leaf area (LA), length of thorns (LT), heterostyly (H), self-compatibility (SC), parthenocarpy (Pa), incidence of non-style flowers (NSF) and mean seed number under open-pollination (SNop) during the evaluation of self-compatibility and parthernocarpy abilities (PDF 157 kb)

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Asins, M.J., Raga, V., Bernet, G.P. et al. Genetic analysis of reproductive, vegetative and fruit quality traits to improve Citrus varieties. Tree Genetics & Genomes 11, 117 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-015-0949-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-015-0949-8

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