Abstract
Association analysis based on linkage disequilibrium has become a common and powerful approach for detection of QTLs underlying complex agronomic traits including drought tolerance. To determine marker/trait association, 148 modern European spring barley cultivars were evaluated under drought stress. Associations of morphological traits with AFLP/SSR markers were investigated based on the mixed linear model using the TASSEL3.0. Population structure was estimated using various methods including Bayesian clustering model by STRUCTURE software, PCoA analysis, NJ dendrogram and Hierarchical Clustering. Linkage disequilibrium patterns were explored among the whole genome and each chromosome separately. All the analysis for population structure divided the population into two sub-groups. Linkage disequilibrium analysis showed that by increasing genetic distance, LD decreases. Totally, 167 significant marker trait associations were found which delineated into 65 QTLs in both treatments. Two stable QTLs on 5H at 86.880 cM were detected for Internode Length and on 3H at 126.421 cM for flag leaf length in drought stress treatment. Fourteen QTLs were co-localized with previously reported QTLs and others were novel. The results indicate that these putative genomic regions contain genes that have pleiotropic effects on morphological traits in drought condition.
Highlights
Drought is one of the climate change consequences affecting stable food production
The variance analysis confirmed high phenotypic variability, which revealed that all traits were severely influenced by environmental factors, showing significant genotype (G), the interaction between genotype and year (G×Y), and the interaction between genotype, environment and year (G×E×Y)
Over the well-watered treatment grains per spike (GRS) showed high heritability (0.89), moderately heritabilities were observed for plant height (PH), Main Spike Length (MSL), awn length (AL) and flag leaf width (FLW) with the values between 0.60–0.69, whereas average number of tillers per plant (ANTP) and flag leaf length (FLL) showed poorly heritabilities: 0.37 and 0.11 respectively
Summary
Drought is one of the climate change consequences affecting stable food production. Temperature increases expected for the dry lands are in the range of 2–4 ̊C, with a tendency in the tropical dry lands towards the lower part of the range, and in the non-tropical dry lands towards the higher part of the range [1,2,3]. Drylands are the most severely affected by climate change. In most global change scenarios, water scarcity is a major determinant on agricultural land [4,5,6].
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