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Detection of QTL for flowering time in multiple families of elite maize

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Abstract

Flowering time is a fundamental quantitative trait in maize that has played a key role in the postdomestication process and the adaptation to a wide range of climatic conditions. Flowering time has been intensively studied and recent QTL mapping results based on diverse founders suggest that the genetic architecture underlying this trait is mainly based on numerous small-effect QTL. Here, we used a population of 684 progenies from five connected families to investigate the genetic architecture of flowering time in elite maize. We used a joint analysis and identified nine main effect QTL explaining approximately 50 % of the genotypic variation of the trait. The QTL effects were small compared with the observed phenotypic variation and showed strong differences between families. We detected no epistasis with the genetic background but four digenic epistatic interactions in a full 2-dimensional genome scan. Our results suggest that flowering time in elite maize is mainly controlled by main effect QTL with rather small effects but that epistasis may also contribute to the genetic architecture of the trait.

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Acknowledgments

This research was conducted within the Biometric and Bioinformatic Tools for Genomics based Plant Breeding project of the GABI –FUTURE initiative. We are grateful to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. This paper is dedicated to Dr. H.F. Utz, whose enthusiasm for QTL mapping inspired our research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Plant Breeding Institute, University of Hohenheim, 70593, Stuttgart, Germany

    Jana Steinhoff, Wenxin Liu, Jochen C. Reif & Tobias Würschum

  2. Crop Genetics and Breeding Department, China Agricultural University, 100193, Beijing, China

    Wenxin Liu

  3. Syngenta Seeds S.p.A., Via per Soresina, 26020, Casalmorano, CR, Italy

    Giovanni Della Porta

  4. Syngenta Seeds SAS, 12, chemin de l’Hobit, B.P. 27, 31790, Saint-Sauveur, France

    Nicolas Ranc

Authors
  1. Jana Steinhoff
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  2. Wenxin Liu
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  3. Jochen C. Reif
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  4. Giovanni Della Porta
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  5. Nicolas Ranc
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  6. Tobias Würschum
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tobias Würschum.

Additional information

Communicated by J. Yu.

J. Steinhoff and W. Liu contributed equally to this work.

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Steinhoff, J., Liu, W., Reif, J.C. et al. Detection of QTL for flowering time in multiple families of elite maize. Theor Appl Genet 125, 1539–1551 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-012-1933-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-012-1933-4

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