Inheritance and distribution of variation at four avenin loci in North American oat germ plasm

Abstract

Avenins (prolamines of the Avena genus) have been shown to be useful in taxonomic studies and cultivar identification; specific allelic identification could assist in these types of studies as well as providing a basis for future linkage and gene mapping studies. The avenin patterns produced by nondenaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis were compared in 70 North American oat cultivars and germ plasms. Populations of F2 progeny were subsequently evaluated to test for allelism of proteins found to be noncoincident in the survey of homozygous cultivars. A minimum of four loci (Av1, Av2, Av3, and Av4) were found to possess alternate alleles with distinctive electrophoretic mobilities. Segregation of 10 alternate alleles were observed in studies of F2 progeny: four for Av1, and two each for the other three loci. Additional variation found among the surveyed cultivars suggested at least two additional electrophoretically variant polypeptides. Several of the alleles were found to be associated with cultivars from specific geographic regions. Two examples were (i) the near exclusive association of the Av10.76 allele with Canadian cultivars and (ii) the high association of the Av10.58 allele with fall-planted cultivars. Fifty percent (SE ± 10.7%) of the fall-planted cultivars have the Av40.58 allele compared with 27.1% (SE ± 8.8%) of spring-planted cultivars.Key words: avenins, prolamines, polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, linkage.