Genetic Variance of Metabolomic Features and Their Relationship With Malting Quality Traits in Spring Barley.

Xiangyu Guo,Jihad Orabi,Frans A A Mulder,Ahmed Jahoor,Pernille Sarup,Just Jensen,Jens Due Jensen,Nanna Hellum Kristensen

doi:10.3389/fpls.2020.575467

Xiangyu Guo, Jihad Orabi + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2020.575467

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Abstract

Barley is the most common source for malt to be used in brewing beer and other alcoholic beverages. This involves converting the starch of barley into fermentable sugars a process that involves malting, that is germinating of the grains, and mashing, which is an enzymatic process. Numerous metabolic processes are involved in germination, where distinct and time-dependent alterations at the metabolite levels happen. In this study, 2,628 plots of 565 spring malting barley lines from Nordic Seed A/S were investigated. Phenotypic records were available for six malting quality (MQ) traits: filtering speed (FS), wort clearness (WCL), extract yield (EY), wort color (WCO), beta glucan (BG), and wort viscosity (WV). Each line had a set of dense genomic markers. In addition, 24,018 metabolomic features (MFs) were obtained for each sample from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra for wort samples produced from each experimental plot. The genetic variation in the MFs was investigated using a univariate model, and the relationship between MFs and the MQ traits was studied using a bivariate model. Results showed that a total of 8,604 MFs had heritability estimates significantly larger than 0 and for all MQ traits, there were genetic correlations with up to 86.77% and phenotypic correlations with up to 90.07% of the significant heritable MFs. In conclusion, around one third of all MFs were significantly heritable, among which a considerable proportion had significant additive genetic and/or phenotypic correlations with the MQ traits (WCO, WV, and BG) in spring barley. The results from this study indicate that many of the MFs are heritable and MFs have great potential to be used in breeding barley for high MQ.

Highlights

Different types of starchy plants have been used for brewing, such as rice, wheat, maize, millet, and sorghum, barley is the most common source for malt to be used in brewing beer and other alcoholic beverages (Zhou, 2010)
Among all the Malting quality (MQ) traits, extract yield (EY) and wort viscosity (WV) had low coefficient of phenotypic variance (CV) which was below 5%, filtering speed (FS) and wort color (WCO) had moderate CV which was around 14%
The current study analyzed the genetic variance in 24,018 individual metabolomic features (MFs) using univariate models, and investigated genetic and phenotypic correlations between significantly heritable MFs and MQ traits in spring barley

Summary

Introduction

Different types of starchy plants have been used for brewing, such as rice, wheat, maize, millet, and sorghum, barley is the most common source for malt to be used in brewing beer and other alcoholic beverages (Zhou, 2010). The amount of barley used for brewing has significantly increased (Zhou, 2010). Malting quality (MQ) traits are important in spring barley, since they can be directly related to the quality of brewed beer and the amount of alcohol that can be made from the grain. A detailed analysis of genetic variation in MQ traits in spring barley was provided by Sarup et al (2020). In this previous study, a population of 1,329 spring barley lines from four breeding cycles were investigated and medium to high narrow sense heritabilities (0.31–0.65) were found for the MQ traits studied

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