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Self-incompatibility, Inbreeding Depression, and Potential to Develop Inbred Lines in Alfalfa

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The Alfalfa Genome

Part of the book series: Compendium of Plant Genomes ((CPG))

Abstract

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is a perennial and outcrossing legume crop predominantly grown for hay, silage, or pasture. Intensive selection has made a dramatic improvement on fitness traits, including winter survival and disease resistance. However, there is a minimal improvement on other economically important traits, such as hay yield, which is still similar to 30 years ago. Intensive phenotyping on this type of trait is prohibitive to apply high selection pressure to identify any superior outcross individuals. Severe inbreeding depression inhibited the development of inbred lines to accumulate favorite alleles and use heterosis. This review highlights the outcomes of inbreeding depression and the causes, including unmasking deleterious alleles and triggering self-incompatibility. We tracked the research efforts that unveil the genetic bases underlying deleterious alleles and self-incompatibility. The magnitudes of inbreeding depression were compared with the rate of heterozygous halved time in diploid and tetraploid. To fill the gap between the controversy and existing hypotheses, we speculated a numeric dominant model of inheritance to align the gap. The numeric dominant model is similar to the Mendelian dominance model defining a genotype to exhibit a dominant phenotype if there is a dominant allele (alphabet dominant). The difference is that the numeric dominance model defines a genotype to exhibit a dominant phenotype with the number of dominant alleles equal to or less than the recessive alleles. The review is completed by the discussion on the development of pseudo-inbred and a hypothesis to identify deleterious alleles using bulked segregation analysis and consequently purge deleterious alleles using marker-assisted selection toward the success of the development of real inbred lines in alfalfa.

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Acknowledgements

This project was partially supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (Hatch project 1014919 and Award #s 2018-70005-28792), and the Washington Grain Commission (Endowment and Award #s 126593 and 134574). The authors thank Cari Park for helpful comments and editing the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

    Atit Parajuli & Zhiwu Zhang

  2. Plant Germplasm Introduction and Testing Research, USDA-ARS, Prosser, WA, 99350, USA

    Long-Xi Yu

  3. Forage & Range Research Lab, USDA-ARS, Logan, UT, 84322, USA

    Michael Peel

  4. Wheat Health, Genetics, and Quality Research Unit, USDA-ARS and Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

    Deven See

  5. Alforex Seeds, N4505 CTH M, West Salem, WI, 54669, USA

    Steve Wagner

  6. Regional Forage Specialist and Irrigated Cropping Systems, Franklin County Extension Office, Washington State University, 404 West Clark Street, Pasco, WA, 99301, USA

    Steve Norberg

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  1. Atit Parajuli
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  2. Long-Xi Yu
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  3. Michael Peel
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  4. Deven See
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  5. Steve Wagner
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  7. Zhiwu Zhang
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Correspondence to Zhiwu Zhang .

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  1. USDA-ARS, Plant Germplasm Introduction and Testing Research, Prosser, WA, USA

    Long-Xi Yu

  2. ICAR-National Institute for Plant Biotechnology, Raja Ramanna Fellow, New Delhi, India

    Chittaranjan Kole

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Parajuli, A. et al. (2021). Self-incompatibility, Inbreeding Depression, and Potential to Develop Inbred Lines in Alfalfa. In: Yu, LX., Kole, C. (eds) The Alfalfa Genome . Compendium of Plant Genomes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74466-3_15

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