The apetalous genotype is a morphological ideotype for increasing seed yield and should be of considerable agricultural use; however, only a few studies have focused on the genetic control of this trait in Brassica napus. In the present study, a recombinant inbred line, the AH population, containing 189 individuals was derived from a cross between an apetalous line ‘APL01’ and a normally petalled variety ‘Holly’. The Brassica 60 K Infinium BeadChip Array harboring 52,157 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers was used to genotype the AH individuals. A high-density genetic linkage map was constructed based on 2,755 bins involving 11,458 SNPs and 57 simple sequence repeats, and was used to identify loci associated with petalous degree (PDgr). The linkage map covered 2,027.53 cM, with an average marker interval of 0.72 cM. The AH map had good collinearity with the B. napus reference genome, indicating its high quality and accuracy. After phenotypic analyses across five different experiments, a total of 19 identified quantitative trait loci (QTLs) distributed across chromosomes A3, A5, A6, A9 and C8 were obtained, and these QTLs were further integrated into nine consensus QTLs by a meta-analysis. Interestingly, the major QTL qPD.C8-2 was consistently detected in all five experiments, and qPD.A9-2 and qPD.C8-3 were stably expressed in four experiments. Comparative mapping between the AH map and the B. napus reference genome suggested that there were 328 genes underlying the confidence intervals of the three steady QTLs. Based on the Gene Ontology assignments of 52 genes to the regulation of floral development in published studies, 146 genes were considered as potential candidate genes for PDgr. The current study carried out a QTL analysis for PDgr using a high-density SNP map in B. napus, providing novel targets for improving seed yield. These results advanced our understanding of the genetic control of PDgr regulation in B. napus.

Floral transition and petal onset, as two main aspects of flower development, are crucial to rapeseed evolutionary success and yield formation. Currently, very little is known regarding the genetic architecture that regulates flowering time and petal morphogenesis in Brassica napus. In the present study, a genome-wide transcriptomic analysis was performed with an absolutely apetalous and early flowering line, APL01, and a normally petalled line, PL01, using high-throughput RNA sequencing. In total, 13,205 differential expressed genes were detected, of which 6111 genes were significantly down-regulated, while 7094 genes were significantly up-regulated in the young inflorescences of APL01 compared with PL01. The expression levels of a vast number of genes involved in protein biosynthesis were altered in response to the early flowering and apetalous character. Based on the putative rapeseed flowering genes, an early flowering network, mainly comprised of vernalization and photoperiod pathways, was built. Additionally, 36 putative upstream genes possibly governing the apetalous character of line APL01 were identified, and six genes potentially regulating petal origination were obtained by combining with three petal-related quantitative trait loci. These findings will facilitate understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying floral transition and petal initiation in B. napus.

BackgroundThe fatty acid composition of B. napus’ seeds determines the oil’s nutritional and industrial values, and affects seed germination. Many studies have reported correlations among C16:0, C18:0, C18:1, C18:2 and C18:3 based on phenotypic data; however, the genetic basis of the fatty acid composition in B. napus is still not well understood.ResultsIn this study, unconditional and conditional quantitative trail locus (QTL) mapping analyses were conducted using a recombinant inbred line in six environments. In total, 21 consensus QTLs each for C16:0, C18:0 and C18:2, 16 for C18:1 and 22 for C18:3 were detected by unconditional mapping. The QTLs with overlapping confidence intervals were integrated into 71 pleiotropically unique QTLs by meta-analysis. Two major QTLs, uuqA5–6 and uuqA5–7, simultaneously affected the fatty acids, except C18:0, in most of environments, with the homologous genes fatty acid desaturase 2 (FAD2) and glycerol-3-phosphate sn-2-acyltransferase 5 (GPAT5) occurring in the confidence interval of uuqA5–6, while phosphatidic acid phosphohydrolase 1 (PAH1) was assigned to uuqA5–7. Moreover, 49, 30, 48, 60 and 45 consensus QTLs were detected for C16:0, C18:0, C18:1, C18:2 and C18:3, respectively, by the conditional mapping analysis. In total, 128 unique QTLs were subsequently integrated from the 232 conditional consensus QTLs. A comparative analysis revealed that 63 unique QTLs could be identified by both mapping methodologies, and 65 additional unique QTLs were only identified in conditional mapping.ConclusionsThus, conditional QTL mapping for fatty acids may uncover numerous additional QTLs that were inhibited by the effects of other traits. These findings provide useful information for better understanding the genetic relationships among fatty acids at the QTL level.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12870-018-1268-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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