Abstract
Drought has become more frequent in Central Europe causing large losses in cereal yields, especially of spring crops. The development of new varieties with increased tolerance to drought is a key tool for improvement of agricultural productivity. Material for the study consisted of 100 barley recombinant inbred lines (RILs) (LCam) derived from the cross between Syrian and European parents. The RILs and parental genotypes were examined in greenhouse experiments under well-watered and water-deficit conditions. During vegetation the date of heading, yield and yield-related traits were measured. RIL population was genotyped with microsatellite and single nucleotide polymorphism markers. This population, together with two other populations, was the basis for the consensus map construction, which was used for identification of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) affecting the traits. The studied lines showed a large variability in heading date. It was noted that drought-treatment negatively affected the yield and its components, especially when applied at the flag leaf stage. In total, 60 QTLs were detected on all the barley chromosomes. The largest number of QTLs was found on chromosome 2H. The main QTL associated with heading, located on chromosome 2H (Q.HD.LC-2H), was identified at SNP marker 5880–2547, in the vicinity of Ppd-H1 gene. SNP 5880–2547 was also the closest marker to QTLs associated with plant architecture, spike morphology and grain yield. The present study showed that the earliness allele from the Syrian parent, as introduced into the genome of an European variety could result in an improvement of barley yield performance under drought conditions.
Highlights
Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the most important crops from an economic point of view (FAOSTAT 2014), but it is an excellent species for genome mapping and map-based analyses (Costa et al 2001; Mansour et al 2014)
The present study showed that the earliness allele from the Syrian parent, as introduced into the genome of an European variety could result in an improvement of barley yield performance under drought conditions
The average heading dates and the mean values of morphological traits for parental cultivars and recombinant inbred lines (RILs) in the six environments are presented in ESM 3a and ESM 3b as supplementary material, respectively
Summary
Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the most important crops from an economic point of view (FAOSTAT 2014), but it is an excellent species for genome mapping and map-based analyses (Costa et al 2001; Mansour et al 2014). Low chromosome number and a high degree of self-fertility mean that barley is a common subject for genetic studies examining drought resistance of crops (Tondelli et al 2006; Talamè et al 2007). Among various types of DNA markers, microsatellites (SSR) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) have been widely used for genome analyses (Cockram et al 2010; Cuesta-Marcos et al 2010; Honsdorf et al 2014; Varshney et al 2007). The first high-density gene map based on SNP markers contained 2.943 SNP loci in 975 marker bins and covered a genetic distance of 1099 cM (Close et al 2009).
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