Abstract
Crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum L.) breeding programs aim to develop later maturing cultivars for extending early spring grazing in Western Canada. Plant maturity is a complex genetic trait, and little is known about genes associated with late maturity in this species. An attempt was made using RNA-Seq to profile the transcriptome of crested wheatgrass maturity and to analyze differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between early and late maturing lines. Three cDNA libraries for each line were generated by sampling leaves at the stem elongation stage, spikes at the boot and anthesis stages. A total of 75,218,230 and 74,015,092 clean sequence reads were obtained for early and late maturing lines, respectively. De novo assembly of all sequence reads generated 401,587 transcripts with a mean length of 546 bp and N50 length of 691 bp. Out of 13,133 DEGs detected, 22, 17, and eight flowering related DEGs were identified for the three stages, respectively. Twelve DEGs, including nine flowering related DEGs at the stem elongation stage were further confirmed by qRT-PCR. The analysis of homologous genes of the photoperiod pathway revealed their lower expression in the late maturing line at the stem elongation stage, suggesting that their differential expression contributed to late maturity in crested wheatgrass.
Highlights
Crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum L.) is widely used for early spring grazing
The flowering date of breeding line S9516 selected for late maturity was on average 6 d later than that of the Plant Introduction (PI) W625134 in the 2015 and 2016 growing seasons (Table 1)
Each selected from the breeding line S9516 and PI W625134, respectively, were used for RNA-Seq analysis
Summary
Crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum L.) is widely used for early spring grazing. This forage crop undergoes its initial growth in Western Canada from May to July and when it reaches the anthesis stage, its forage nutritive value and palatability declines rapidly [1]. Development of late maturing cultivars to maintain forage quality is highly desirable for this species. Flowering is one of the most important events in a plant’s life cycle [3]. In many C3 grasses, flowering in response to seasonal changes is controlled by pathways such as vernalization and photoperiod [4]
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