Genetic diversity and relationship between cultivated, weedy and wild rye species as revealed by chloroplast and mitochondrial DNA non-coding regions analysis.

Lidia Skuza,Ewa Filip,Izabela Szućko,Tomasz Strzała,Tzen-Yuh Chiang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0213023

Lidia Skuza, Ewa Filip + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213023

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Abstract

The genus Secale is small but very diverse. Despite the high economic importance, phylogenetic relationships of rye species have not been fully determined, and they are extremely important for the process of breeding of new cultivars that can be enriched with functional traits derived from wild rye species. The study analyzed the degree of relationship of 35 accessions of the genus Secale, representing 13 most often distinguished species and subspecies, originating from various seed collections in the world, based on the analysis of non-coding regions of the chloroplast (cpDNA) and mitochondrial genome (mtDNA), widely used in phylogenetic and population plant studies, because of a higher rate of evolution than the coding regions. There was no clear genetic structure between different species and subspecies, which may indicated the introgression between these taxa. The obtained data confirmed that S. vavilovii was very similar to S. cereale, which confirmed the assumption that they might share a common ancestor. The results also confirmed the divergence of S. sylvestre from other species and subspecies of rye. Areas that may be useful molecular markers in studies on closely related species of the genus Secale were also indicated.

Highlights

Rye is a difficult object of genetic and breeding studies
The size polymorphism of the PCR products obtained was not detected within the analyzed regions
The results obtained in this study indicated the variability of the analyzed intergenic sequences, while the first region proved conserved in Secale species and subspecies (Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

Rye is a difficult object of genetic and breeding studies. The reason is the open-pollination, self-incompatibility and the relationship between heterozygosity and productivity, which arises as a result of inter-chromosomal gene interactions [1]. Rye has the largest genome ~ 7.9 Gbp among all diploid Triticeae [2], which is in 90% consisting of repetitive sequences. The genus Secale is very diverse–it includes annual, perennial, self-pollinating and open-pollinating species of various morphologies. The classification system of the American Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN, http://www.arsgrin.gov) currently includes four species to the genus Secale: annual S. cereale L., annual S. sylvestre Host and S. vavilovii Grossh.

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