Abstract
Floral traits are both evolutionarily and economically relevant for ornamental plants. However, their underlying genetic architecture, especially in woody ornamental plants, is still poorly understood. We perform mapping experiments aimed at identifying specific quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that control the size, shape, architecture, color, and timing of flowers in mei (Prunus mume). We find that the narrow region of chromosome 1 (5–15 Mb) contains a number of floral QTLs. Most QTLs detected from this mapping study are annotated to candidate genes that regulate various biological functions toward the floral formation. We identify strong pleiotropic control on different aspects of flower morphology (including shape, petal number, pistil number, petal color, and calyx color) and flower timing, but find different genetic systems that mediate whether a flower produces pistils and how many pistils a flower produces. We find that many floral QTLs display pleiotropic effects on shoot length growth but shoot radial growth, implicating a possible association of floral display with light capture. We conduct a transcriptomic study to characterize the genomic signature of floral QTLs expressed in mei. Our mapping results about the genetic control of floral features make it promising to select superior varieties for mei carrying flowers of ornamental value.
Highlights
Floral traits play an important role in plant diversity, plant evolution, and ornamental plant breeding (Bradshaw et al, 1995; Ashman and Majetic, 2006; Ellis et al, 2014; Noman et al, 2017; Feng et al, 2019; Itagaki et al, 2020)
We identified a set of significant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), called QTLs thereafter, associated with floral traits in three mapping populations
Results from all the three populations are compared to strengthen our overall conclusion about floral genetic architecture
Summary
Floral traits play an important role in plant diversity, plant evolution, and ornamental plant breeding (Bradshaw et al, 1995; Ashman and Majetic, 2006; Ellis et al, 2014; Noman et al, 2017; Feng et al, 2019; Itagaki et al, 2020). For perennial woody plants, characterized by a large size, a long generation interval, and high heterozygosity and with a limited number of mutations, it is difficult or even impossible to generate inbred lines, as genetic resources appropriate for traditional quantitative and molecular genetic approaches (Aranzana et al, 2019). Because of this limitation, floral genetics for woody plants has Mapping Floral Genetic Architecture in Mei largely lagged behind that in model systems and crop plants (Andres and Coupland, 2012; Pajoro, 2014; Chen et al, 2018). High-density genetic mapping allows these floral genes to be identified, their numbers, their genomic locations, their genetic effects, and their pleiotropic effects
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
