Abstract
As a great potential bio-fuel feedstock, the genus Miscanthus has been widely studied around the world, especially Miscanthus × giganteus owing to its high biomass yield in Europe and North America. However, the narrow genetic basis and sterile characteristics of M. × giganteus have become a limitation for utilization and adaptation to extreme climate conditions. In this study, we focused on one of the progenitors of M. × giganteus, Miscanthus sinensis, which was originally distributed in East Asia with abundant genetic resources and comparable biomass yield potential to M. × giganteus in some areas. A collection of 138 individuals was selected for conducting a 3-year trial of biomass production and analyzed by using 104 pairs of SRAP, ISAP, and SSR primers for genetic diversity as well as marker-trait association. Significant differences in biomass yield and related traits were observed among individuals. Tiller number, fresh biomass yield per plant and dry biomass yield per plant had a high level of phenotypic variation among individuals and the coefficient of variation were all above 40% in 2011, 2012, and 2013. The majority of the traits had a significant correlation with the biomass yield except for the length and width of flag leaves. Plant height was a highly stable trait correlated with biomass yield. A total of 1059 discernible loci were detected by markers across individuals. The population structure (Q) and cluster analyses identified three subpopulations in the collection and family relative kinship (K) represented high gene flow among M. sinensis populations from Southwest China. Model testing identified that Q+K was the best model for describing the associations between the markers and traits, compared to the simple linear, Q or K model. Using the Q+K model, 12 significant associations (P < 0.001) were identified including four markers with plant height and one with biomass yield. Such associations would serve an efficient tool for an early selection of M. sinensis and facilitate a genetic improvement of biomass yield for this species.
Highlights
The growing use of fossil fuel has contributed to increasing global warming, but the uses of renewable energy resources such as biofuels could be an efficient approach to solve the energy challenge (Kim et al, 2014)
We extended the number of PCR-based markers by using simple sequence repeats (SSRs) developed from M. sinensis (Hung et al, 2009; Ho et al, 2011; Zhou et al, 2011), maize (Zhong et al, 2009; Lu et al, 2012), sorghum (Wang et al, 2005; Xu et al, 2013), sugarcane (Lu et al, 2012), and SSR developed from conserved expressed sequence tags (ESTs) databases on grass species (Kantety et al, 2002), as well as intron splice position amplified markers of intron sequence amplified polymorphism (ISAP) and parts of sequence related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) markers used in Nie et al (2014) on 138 diverse M. sinensis varieties selected from previous population according to the geographic information (Xu et al, 2013; Nie et al, 2014)
The results showed that tillers in each plant (TN), FW, and DW had a high level of phenotypic variation with coefficient of variation (CV) of above 40% in 2011, 2012, and 2013
Summary
The growing use of fossil fuel has contributed to increasing global warming, but the uses of renewable energy resources such as biofuels could be an efficient approach to solve the energy challenge (Kim et al, 2014). M. × giganteus performs well on biomass yield and is the only hybrid genotype currently available for use in most countries (Nishiwaki et al, 2011; Dwiyanti et al, 2014), but it is time and labor consuming to propagate the plants through rhizome division or tissue culture. It is highly risky and genetically difficult to improve M. Further works for evaluation of domestication and improvement of M. sinensis as a new valuable genetic resource need to be conducted, especially in areas of its origin (Yook et al, 2014)
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