Abstract
BackgroundHeat stress is a critical threat to tall fescue in transitional and warm climate zones. Identification of association between molecular markers and heat tolerance-related functional traits would promote the efficient selection of heat tolerant tall fescue cultivars. Association analysis of heat tolerance-related traits was conducted in 100 diverse tall fescue accessions consisting of 93 natural genotypes originating from 33 countries and 7 turf-type commercial cultivars.ResultsThe panel displayed significant genetic variations in growth rate (GR), turfgrass quality (TQ), survival rate (SR), chlorophyll content (CHL) and evapotranspiration rate (ET) in greenhouse and growth chamber trials. Two subpopulations were detected in the panel of accessions by 1010 SSR alleles with 90 SSR markers, but no obvious relative kinship was observed. 97 and 67 marker alleles associated with heat tolerance-related traits were identified in greenhouse trial and growth chamber trial (P < 0.01) using mix linear model, respectively. Due to different experimental conditions of the two trials, 2 SSR marker alleles associated with GR and ET were simultaneously identified at P < 0.01 level in two trials in response to heat stress.ConclusionHigh-temperature induced great variations of functional traits in tall fescue accessions. And the identified marker alleles associated with functional traits could provide important information about heat tolerance genetic pathways, and be used for molecular assisted breeding to enhance tall fescue performance under heat stress.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12870-015-0494-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Heat stress is a critical threat to tall fescue in transitional and warm climate zones
Significant accession and treatment time effects under heat stress were observed on growth rate (GR), turfgrass quality (TQ), Chlorophyll content (CHL), and survival rate (SR) in both trials (Table 1)
The average growth rate decreased from 0.24 g d-1 at initial time to 0.05 g d-1 at 14 WOT, turfgrass quality reduced from 6.55 to 2.56, survival rate decreased from 99.65% to 46.66%, chlorophyll content decreased from 2.35 mg g-1 Fresh leave weight (FW) to 1.47 mg g-1 FW, and evapotranspiration rate decreased from 61.55 g d-1 to 10.64 g d-1, respectively in greenhouse trial
Summary
Heat stress is a critical threat to tall fescue in transitional and warm climate zones. Identification of association between molecular markers and heat tolerance-related functional traits would promote the efficient selection of heat tolerant tall fescue cultivars. Association analysis of heat tolerance-related traits was conducted in 100 diverse tall fescue accessions consisting of 93 natural genotypes originating from 33 countries and 7 turf-type commercial cultivars. Heat stress limits the growth and development of tall fescue in transitional and warm climatic regions. Association mapping has been widely applied to explore the genetic basis of complex quantitative traits in plant species, and reported under favorable conditions like drought [11,12,13,14]. There was limited information on the association between marker genes and heat tolerance of plants [8]
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