Abstract
BackgroundBrachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium) is rapidly emerging as a powerful model system to facilitate research aimed at improving grass crops for grain, forage and energy production. To characterize the natural diversity of Brachypodium and provide a valuable new tool to the growing list of resources available to Brachypodium researchers, we created and characterized a large, diverse collection of inbred lines.ResultsWe developed 84 inbred lines from eight locations in Turkey. To enable genotypic characterization of this collection, we created 398 SSR markers from BAC end and EST sequences. An analysis of 187 diploid lines from 56 locations with 43 SSR markers showed considerable genotypic diversity. There was some correlation between SSR genotypes and broad geographic regions, but there was also a high level of genotypic diversity at individual locations. Phenotypic analysis of this new germplasm resource revealed considerable variation in flowering time, seed size, and plant architecture. The inbreeding nature of Brachypodium was confirmed by an extremely high level of homozygosity in wild plants and a lack of cross-pollination under laboratory conditions.ConclusionTaken together, the inbreeding nature and genotypic diversity observed at individual locations suggest a significant amount of long-distance seed dispersal. The resources developed in this study are freely available to the research community and will facilitate experimental applications based on natural diversity.
Highlights
Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium) is rapidly emerging as a powerful model system to facilitate research aimed at improving grass crops for grain, forage and energy production
Polymorphic markers for population studies we determined the level of simple sequence repeat (SSR) polymorphism in a small collection of six Brachypodium lines (Bd1-1, Bd23, Bd3-1 Bd18-1, Bd21, Bd21-3) using 621 primer pairs (144 from expressed sequence tag (EST) and 477 from BAC end sequence (BES))
In this study we have demonstrated that considerable genotypic and phenotypic variation exists within this Brachypodium collection
Summary
Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium) is rapidly emerging as a powerful model system to facilitate research aimed at improving grass crops for grain, forage and energy production. The small grass Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium) is fast emerging as a powerful model system to study questions unique to the grasses. A truly tractable model grass is needed because the extremely powerful model dicot, Arabidopsis thaliana, cannot be used to answer questions where dicot and grass biology diverge (e.g. cell wall composition). BMC Plant Biology 2009, 9:88 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/9/88 rectly from grasses and are projected to use increasing amounts of energy derived from grasses grown as biofuel crops. There is considerable need for a model grass to facilitate research aimed at improving grasses as grain, forage and energy crops to supply an ever increasing human population with food and energy. The emergence of Brachypodium as a model organism fulfills this need
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