Abstract
Intense selection for specific seed qualities in winter oilseed rape breeding has had an inadvertent negative influence on seed germination performance. In a panel of 215 diverse winter oilseed rape varieties spanning over 50 years of breeding progress in winter-type rapeseed, we found that low seed erucic acid content and reduced seed glucosinolate content were significantly related with prolonged germination time. Genome-wide association mapping revealed that this relationship is caused by linkage drag between important loci for seed quality and germination traits. One QTL for mean germination time on chromosome A09 co-localized with significant but minor QTL for both seed erucic acid and seed glucosinolate content. This suggested either potential pleiotropy or close linkage of minor factors influencing all three traits. Therefore, a reduction in germination performance may be due to inadvertent co-selection of genetic variants associated with 00 seed quality that have a negative influence on germination. Our results suggest that marker-assisted selection of positive alleles for mean germination time within the modern quality pool can help breeders to maintain maximal germination capacity in new 00-quality oilseed rape cultivars.
Highlights
Oilseed rape is today one of the most important oil crops worldwide, with a current global oil production of over 24 Mt1
Low erucic acid (EA) derived from the German spring rapeseed variety “Liho,” which carried mutations in two Bna.FAE1 homologs, while low GSL content was first identified in the Polish spring rapeseed cultivar “Bronowski.” Large-scale backcrossing programs facilitated the introgression of these traits into all the different ecogeographical forms of oilseed B. napus, initially in spring-sown germplasm in Canada and subsequently into winter-type germplasm in Europe
In a panel of 215 diverse winter oilseed rape varieties spanning over 50 years of breeding progress in winter-type rapeseed, we found that low seed EA content and reduced seed GSL content were significantly related with inferior seed germination
Summary
Oilseed rape (canola, rapeseed: Brassica napus L.) is today one of the most important oil crops worldwide, with a current global oil production of over 24 Mt1 This success is attributable to intensive breeding for seed quality traits during the last half century. The success of quality breeding in establishing a leading global crop was associated with significant genetic bottlenecks that have greatly diminished genetic diversity in modern breeding pools (Hasan et al, 2006; Bus et al, 2011; Qian et al, 2014) Both seed quality traits – low EA and low GSL content – originated from single genetic resources (reviewed by Friedt and Snowdon, 2009). The first double-low (00) winter oilseed rape cultivar, “Librador,” was released in Germany in 1981
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