Abstract
The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) male sterile 32 (ms32) mutant has been used in hybrid seed breeding programs largely because it produces no pollen and has exserted stigmas. In this study, histological examination of anthers revealed dysfunctional pollen and tapetum development in the ms32 mutant. The ms32 locus was fine mapped to a 28.5 kb interval that encoded four putative genes. Solyc01g081100, a homolog of Arabidopsis bHLH10/89/90 and rice EAT1, was proposed to be the candidate gene of MS32 because it contained a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) that led to the formation of a premature stop codon. A codominant derived cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (dCAPS) marker, MS32D, was developed based on the SNP. Real-time quantitative reverse-transcription PCR showed that most of the genes, which were proposed to be involved in pollen and tapetum development in tomato, were downregulated in the ms32 mutant. These findings may aid in marker-assisted selection of ms32 in hybrid breeding programs and facilitate studies on the regulatory mechanisms of pollen and tapetum development in tomato.
Highlights
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is one of the most important vegetable crops in the world
Ms32 is a recessive mutation, and its mutant phenotype is expressed at the flowering stage (Fig. 1); it is inconvenient to distinguish fertile and sterile plants when the ms[32] line is used in hybrid seed production and the ms[32] locus is introduced into the inbred line
The availability of molecular markers tightly linked to the MS32 mutant gene would facilitate functional studies and breeding
Summary
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is one of the most important vegetable crops in the world. Hybrid vigor has been extensively utilized in tomato production because F1-hybrid cultivars usually exhibit a greater yield and higher disease resistance than open-pollinated varieties[1,2]. Male sterility has proven to be a useful trait for hybrid seed production[3]. Male-sterile mutants are classified as structural, functional, and sporogenous types[4]. Structural male-sterile mutants of tomato usually bear extremely deformed stamens and do not produce pollen, such as stamenless (sl)[5] and sl-26.
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