Preliminary evidence of the associations between DNA markers and morphological characters in sunflower under natural and salt stress conditions

Abstract

Soil salinity is a serious threat to agricultural products worldwide. Agricultural biotechnology mainly aims at developing plants with higher tolerance in order to face the challenging environmental conditions, such as drought and salinity. Identification of marker-character associations is the first step towards marker-aided selection in plant improvement programs. In the current study, quantitative trait loci (QTLs), associated with salt tolerance, were identified using 84 common sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) inbred lines, collected from different geographical origins. The lines were fingerprinted with 30 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. This generated 71 clear and scorable bands, 87% of which were polymorphic. Associations between SSR markers and 18 agronomic characters were analysed using mixed linear model (MLM). Based on SSR markers data, the association panel was subdivided into two subpopulations (K = 2). About 2.06% of the 435 possible locus pairs of the studied SSRs represented significant linkage disequilibrium (LD). Six and 13 SSR loci showed significant (P ≤ 0.01) association with the assessed characters under natural and salt stress conditions, respectively. Several molecular markers were significantly associated with more than one phenotypic character, suggesting the possible presence of genetic linkage or pleiotropic effects. The identified and associated markers are expected to be helpful in marker-aided selection in sunflower breeding programmes.

Advanced Biotechnological Interventions in Mitigating Drought Stress in Plants

“…Developing drought-resistant varieties through traditional breeding complemented by biotechnological tools such as identifying drought-resistant genes, QTL analysis, gene transformation, and marker-assisted selection is crucial in this endeavor [ 151 ]. The role of biotechnology in enhancing plant tolerance to drought stress is increasingly relevant, as is the need to develop crops that can withstand challenging environmental conditions [ 152 , 153 ]. The engineering of plants for improved tolerance to abiotic stresses, including drought, is a significant objective of plant biotechnology and is anticipated to have commercial applications shortly [ 28 ].…”

Genetic structure and identification of molecular markers associated with agrobiological traits in Capsicum annuum accessions

“…An appropriate germplasm collection with high genotypic and phenotypic diversity for the traits of interest is mandatory for a successful marker-trait analysis through association approach (Gomez et al, 2011). However, the efficiency of association analysis is significantly influenced by the population structure (Ahmadpour et al, 2018). Many statistical models have been used to minimize the false positive errors provoked by the admixture of populations.…”