Abstract
AbstractOne response to mitigate the impact of climate change on agricultural systems is to develop new varieties that are tolerant to the new range of biotic and abiotic challenges this change causes. This requires access to novel variants of genes for complex adaptive traits. Crop wild relatives (CWRs) are a potentially valuable source of these genes; however, these materials are often difficult to work with and identifying valuable alleles is difficult without substantial investment in prebreeding. In this study, we describe the development of a nested association mapping population for sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] using two cultivated grain sorghum reference parents and nine wild and exotic sorghum accessions as donors. The donor parents come from the S. bicolor (L.) Moench subsp. verticilliflorum (Steud.) de Wet ex Wiersema & J. Dahlb., S. bicolor (L.) Moench subsp. drummondii (Steud.) de Wet ex Davidse, and S. bicolor (L.) Moench subsp. bicolor margaritiferum taxa and were sampled from a range of environments across Africa. In total, the resource consists of 13 populations and a total of 1,224 lines. The population has been genotyped with diversity array technology (DArT) markers that produced 42,372 unique single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers covering the genome. We determine the utility of the resource for high resolution mapping of complex traits by demonstrating that the exotics contain unique alleles for some example adaptive trait loci and by using the population for genome‐wide association study (GWAS). The resource should provide useful material for plant breeders attempting to deal with the challenges generated by climate change.
Highlights
IntroductionSorghum is an important source of food and fodder in waterlimited agricultural production systems and, as such, is a staple for over 500 million people worldwide
42,372 genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) were identified in the panel, corresponding to an average of one SNP per 15 kb, and were used to investigate parental allele segregation in the 13 populations with >20 lines (Table 2)
For plant height and rust, the best linear unbiased predictor (BLUP) were averaged across sites
Summary
Sorghum is an important source of food and fodder in waterlimited agricultural production systems and, as such, is a staple for over 500 million people worldwide. The crop is grown predominantly in water-limited environments in the tropics and subtropics. Recent modelling suggests that climate change is expected to increase incidence of abiotic stress, 150 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/csc. Crop Science 151 destabilizing sorghum production (Burke, Lobell, & Guarino, 2009, Lobell et al, 2015). To enhance the productivity and sustainability of the sorghum grain crop, breeders will need access to novel genetic variation in adaptive traits
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