Genetic mapping reveals new loci and alleles for flowering time and plant height using the double round-robin population of barley

Abstract

Flowering time and plant height are two critical determinants of yield potential in barley (Hordeum vulgare). Although their role as key traits, a comprehensive understanding of the genetic complexity of flowering time and plant height regulation in barley is still lacking. Through a double round-robin population originated from the crossings of 23 diverse parental inbred lines, we aimed to determine the variance components in the regulation of flowering time and plant height in barley as well as identify new genetic variants by single and multi-population quantitative trait loci (QTL) analyses and allele mining. Despite similar genotypic variance, we observed higher environmental variance components for plant height than flowering time. Furthermore, we detected one new QTL for flowering time and two new QTL for plant height. Finally, we identified a new functional allelic variant of the main regulatory genePpd-H1. Our results show that the genetic architecture of flowering time and plant height might be more complex than reported earlier and that a number of undetected, small effect or low frequency, genetic variants underlie the control of these two traits.

Genetic mapping reveals new loci and alleles for flowering time and plant height using the double round-robin population of barley

“…The codes used for the calculation of the adjusted entry means, the single and multi-parent population QTL analyses, the epistatic QTL models, the WGCNA analysis, as well as the datasets of the adjusted entry means of the HvDRR population, the genetic haplotypes used to build the ancestral model, and the genotypic and phenotypic data used in the QTL analyses are available at GitHub: https://github.com/cosenzaf/HvDRR_FT_PH . The data for membership of genes to gene modules used in the WGCNA are available at Zenodo repository: https://zenodo.org/record/7525604#.Y7_VgxXMLIW ( Cosenza, 2023 ). Genetic maps and variant calling data can be obtained from Casale et al (2022) and Weisweiler et al (2022) .…”

Dynamic phytomeric growth contributes to local adaptation in barley

“…Plant height is polygenically controlled in many cereal crop species 64,65,66,67,68 . It is unclear, however, to what extents these height-related QTLs can be explained by the initiation and elongation processes.…”