Background
Premature senescence of flag leaf severely affects wheat yield and quality. Chlorophyll (Chl) degradation is the most obvious symptom during leaf senescence and catalyzed by a series of enzymes. Pheophytin pheophorbide hydrolase (Pheophytinase, PPH) gene encodes a Chl degradation hydrolase.
Results
In this study, the coding, genomic and promoter sequences of wheat
TaPPH-A
gene were cloned. The corresponding lengths were 1467 bp, 4479 bp and 3666 bp, respectively. Sequence structure analysis showed that
TaPPH-A
contained five exons and four introns. After the multiple sequences alignment of
TaPPH-A
genome from 36 accessions in a wheat diversity panel, four SNPs and one 2-bp InDel were observed, which formed two haplotypes,
TaPPH-7A-1
and
TaPPH-7A-2
. Based on the SNP at 1299 bp (A/G), a molecular marker
TaPPH-7A
-dCAPS was developed to distinguish allelic variation (A/G). Using the molecular markers, 13 SSR, and 116 SNP markers, a linkage map of chromosome 7A were integrated.
TaPPH-A
was mapped on the chromosome region flanked by
Xwmc9
(0.94 cM) and
AX-95634545
(1.04 cM) on 7A in a DH population. Association analysis between
TaPPH-7A
allelic variation and agronomic traits found that
TaPPH-7A
was associated with TGW in 11 of 12 environments and Chl content at grain-filling stage under drought stress using Population 1 consisted of 323 accessions. The accessions possessed
TaPPH-7A-1
(A) had higher TGW and Chl content than those possessed
TaPPH-7A-2
(G), thus
TaPPH-7A-1
(A) was a favorable allelic variation. By analyzing the frequency of favorable allelic variation
TaPPH-7A-1
(A) in Population 2 with 157 landraces and Population 3 with 348 modern cultivars, we found it increased from pre-1950 (0) to 1960s (54.5%), then maintained a relatively stable level about 56% from 1960s to 1990s.
Conclusion
These results suggested the favorable allelic variation
TaPPH-7A-1
(A) should be valuable in enhancing grain yield by improving the source (chlorophyll content) and sink (the developing grain) simultaneously. Furthermore, the newly developed molecular marker
TaPPH-7A
-dCAPS could be integrated into a breeding kit of screening high TGW wheat for marker-assisted selection.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1186/s12870-019-1901-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.