Abstract
The tolerance of spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) cultivars to spring drought is an important agronomic trait affecting crop yield and quality in Poland. Therefore, breeders require new molecular markers to select plants with lower spring drought susceptibility. With the advent of genomic selection technology, simple molecular tools may still be applicable to screen material for markers of the most important traits and in-depth genome scanning. In previous studies, diversity arrays technology (DArT)-based genetic maps were constructed for F2 populations of Polish fodder and malt barley elite breeding lines, and 15 and 18 quantitative trait loci (QTLs) related to spring drought tolerance were identified, respectively. In this paper, we show the results of a conversion of 30 DArT markers corresponding to 11 QTLs into simple sequence repeat (SSR) and sequence tagged site (STS) markers. Twenty-two polymorphic markers were obtained, including 13 DArT-based SSRs. Additionally, 31 SSR markers, located in close proximity to the DArT markers, were selected from the GrainGenes database and tested. Further analyses of 24 advanced breeding lines with different drought tolerances confirmed that five out of the 30 converted markers, as well as three out of the 31 additional SSR markers, were effective in marker-assisted selection for drought tolerance. The possible function of clones related to these markers in drought tolerance is discussed.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13353-015-0273-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
A goal of plant breeding research is the discovery of methods that allow for the selection of genotypes characterized by higher levels of tolerance to stress factors (Vinocur and Altman 2005)
We show the results of a conversion of 30 diversity arrays technology (DArT) markers corresponding to 11 quantitative trait locus (QTL) into simple sequence repeat (SSR) and sequence tagged site (STS) markers
Searching for DArT clone sequences for QTLs related to drought tolerance
Summary
A goal of plant breeding research is the discovery of methods that allow for the selection of genotypes characterized by higher levels of tolerance to stress factors (Vinocur and Altman 2005). To improve stress tolerance in economically important crops, both conventional plant selection methods and marker-assisted methods have been used (Cattivelli et al 2008). One of the most important methods is marker-assisted selection (MAS), which aims to identify molecular markers strongly associated with a particular trait. The advantage of MAS is that it increases the efficiency of conventional selection methods and offers the possibility to identify genotypes whose phenotypic characteristics are the results of the simultaneous interaction of multiple genes. The use of molecular markers in the breeding process increases the selection sensitivity, enables the identification of plants with desired traits, and is sensitive to the environment (Collard et al 2005)
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