Molecular Assortment of Lens Species with Different Adaptations to Drought Conditions Using SSR Markers

Abstract

The success of drought tolerance breeding programs can be enhanced through molecular assortment of germplasm. This study was designed to characterize molecular diversity within and between Lens species with different adaptations to drought stress conditions using SSR markers. Drought stress was applied at seedling stage to study the effects on morpho-physiological traits under controlled condition, where tolerant cultivars and wilds showed 12.8–27.6% and 9.5–23.2% reduction in seed yield per plant respectively. When juxtaposed to field conditions, the tolerant cultivars (PDL-1 and PDL-2) and wild (ILWL-314 and ILWL-436) accessions showed 10.5–26.5% and 7.5%–15.6% reduction in seed yield per plant, respectively under rain-fed conditions. The reductions in seed yield in the two tolerant cultivars and wilds under severe drought condition were 48–49% and 30.5–45.3% respectively. A set of 258 alleles were identified among 278 genotypes using 35 SSR markers. Genetic diversity and polymorphism information contents varied between 0.321–0.854 and 0.299–0.836, with mean value of 0.682 and 0.643, respectively. All the genotypes were clustered into 11 groups based on SSR markers. Tolerant genotypes were grouped in cluster 6 while sensitive ones were mainly grouped into cluster 7. Wild accessions were separated from cultivars on the basis of both population structure and cluster analysis. Cluster analysis has further grouped the wild accessions on the basis of species and sub-species into 5 clusters. Physiological and morphological characters under drought stress were significantly (P = 0.05) different among microsatellite clusters. These findings suggest that drought adaptation is variable among wild and cultivated genotypes. Also, genotypes from contrasting clusters can be selected for hybridization which could help in evolution of better segregants for improving drought tolerance in lentil.

Molecular Scanning and Morpho-Physiological Dissection of Component Mechanism in Lens Species in Response to Aluminium Stress

“…This suggested that grouping of wild accessions was on the basis of Al resistance reactions, while cultigens showed lesser Al tolerance grouping pattern. Similarly, separation of wild accessions from cultigens in lentil has been reported in some recent studies [ 52 , 12 ]. Further, among 4 resistant wilds, ILWL-3 belongs to spp.…”

“…These markers have been used in lentil to study diversity in relation to many abiotic stresses like drought, heat etc. and can be successfully utilized for diversity analysis for Al resistance as well [ 12 , 13 ].…”

Investigation of the Mechanism of Physiological Tolerance in Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) Cultivars under Drought Stress Conditions

“…Drought increased H 2 O 2 accumulation and lipid peroxidation in plants while reducing ascorbic acid concentrations. Several studies have shown that drought stress causes an increase in proline which is an important parameter in determining the extent of tolerance to drought (8)(9)(10)(11).…”

Genetic Relationship in Tea Germplasms with Drought Contrasting Traits

“…However, when only the important characteristics of morphology and physiological are taken into consideration they showed significant positive correlation with the molecular genetic distances. Positive correlation among datasets between molecular markers and morphophysiological traits were also reported for drought tolerant and sensitive cultivars of lentils (Singh et al 2016) and tall fescue (Sun et al 2015). Therefore, morpho-physiological factors should be considered along with the molecular markers for selection of tea cultivars for improving the drought tolerance in tea.…”