A new major QTL for flag leaf thickness in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.)

Abstract

Background Carbohydrate accumulation of photosynthetic organs, mainly leaves, are the primary sources of grain yield in cereals. The flag leaf plays a vital role in seed development, which is probably the most neglected morphological characteristic during traditional selection processes. Results In this experiment, four flag leaf morphological traits and seven yield-related traits were investigated in a DH population derived from a cross between a wild barley and an Australian malting barley cultivar. Flag leaf thickness (FLT) showed significantly positive correlations with grain size. Four QTL, located on chromosomes 1H, 2H, 3H, and 5H, respectively, were identified for FLT. Among them, a major QTL was located on chromosome 3H with a LOD value of 18.4 and determined 32% of the phenotypic variation. This QTL showed close links but not pleiotropism to the previously reported semi-dwarf gene sdw1 from the cultivated barley. This QTL was not reported before and the thick leaf allele from the wild barley could provide a useful source for improving grain yield through breeding. Conclusions Our results also provided valuable evidence that source traits and sink traits in barley are tightly connected and suggest further improvement of barley yield potential with enhanced and balanced source and sink relationships by exploiting potentialities of the wild barley resources. Moreover, this study will provide a novel sight on understanding the evolution and development of leaf morphology in barley and improving barley production by rewilding for lost superior traits during plant evolution.

Transcriptome profiling disclosed the effect of single and combined drought and heat stress on reprogramming of genes expression in barley flag leaf

“…Most transcriptomics reports focus on younger leaf examination (e.g., Wehner et al, 2016;Zeng et al, 2016), less on roots (e.g., Janiak et al, 2019), and very limited studies about genome-wide expression changes in barley crown tissue have been reported (Svoboda et al, 2016;Mikołajczak et al, 2022). The sparse evidence corresponding to molecular characteristics of barley flag leaf is related mainly to metabolite profiling (Templer et al, 2017;Niu et al, 2022). Also, Hosseini et al (2016) examined the effect of potassium treatment on primary metabolism and abscisic acid accumulation in barley flag leaf of two genotypes contrasted in stress tolerance and exposed to temporal drought.…”

Genetic Variability of Some Physiological Traits, Yield Components and Grain Quality Characters in Rice Entries

“…Generally, the entire variation cannot be explained by a few principal components, the principal component analysis revealed a high degree of variability among the genotypes studied (Tiruneh et al 2019). The first two principal components, which account for 45.58% of the variance, were plotted to see if there were any relationships between the rice characteristics under study (Dehghani et al 2008;Tiruneh et al 2019;Niu et al 2022).…”

“…Flag leaf contributes grain weight by 41 -43% and is an indicator of the potential yield of grain (Al-Tahir 2014; Yuan et al 2015). Flag leaf area subscribes by increasing chlorophyll content and fresh weight (Kartahadimaja et al 2021) and contributes to over 50% of carbohydrate accumulation in grains (Briggs & Aytenfisu 1980;Gladun and Karpov 2015;Niu et al 2022). This character plays a key role in fixing the photosynthetic capacity of the plant, and it has the appearance of a complex trait with two main component factors: flag leaf length and width (Jiantao et al 2017).…”

Genetic dissection of quantitative trait loci for flag leaf size in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

“…The annotations and functions of genes between flanking markers were further analyzed using UniProt ( ). The expression pattern analysis of candidate genes was performed using Gene Expression of Triticeae Multi-omics Center ( ) ( Ma et al., 2021 ) and Wheat Expression Browser ( ) ( Ramírez-González et al., 2018 ). The circle graph of expression values was drawn using the ggplot2 package in R 4.1.2.…”

“…Flag leaf size, estimated by flag leaf length (FLL), width (FLW), and area (FLA), is an important control of plant structure and is correlated with yield-related traits (Wang et al, 2011;Niu et al, 2022;Zhao et al, 2022). In cereals, flag leaves are the main organ for photosynthesis and plays a crucial role in grain development, such as enhanced proteostasis, lipid remodeling, and nitrogen remobilization (Cohen et al, 2022).…”