Abstract
In barley and other cereal crops, phenological diversity drives adaptation to different cultivation areas. Improvement of barley yield and quality traits requires adaptation to specific production areas with introgression of favorable alleles dependent upon precise identification of the underlying genes. Combining targeted sequence capture systems with next-generation sequencing provides an efficient approach to explore target genetic regions at high resolution, and allows rapid discovery of thousands of genetic polymorphisms. Here, we apply a versatile target-capture method to detect genome-wide polymorphisms in 174 flowering time-related genes, chosen based on prior knowledge from barley, rice, and Arabidopsis thaliana. Sequences were generated across a phenologically diverse panel of 895 barley varieties, resulting a high mean depth coverage of ~25x allowing reliable discovery and calling of insertion-deletion (InDel) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Sequences of InDel and SNPs from the targeted enrichment were utilized to develop 67 Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR (KASP) markers for validation. This work provides researchers and breeders a comprehensive molecular toolkit for the selection of phenology-related traits in barley.
Highlights
Background & SummaryPhenological diversity drives adaptation to different areas of cultivation in barley and other cereal crops1
Improvement of barley yield and quality traits, enhancing adaptation to specific production areas, and introgression of favorable alleles into commercial varieties all depend upon the precise identification of the underlying genes2
Differences in many alleles that modify phenology are based on genetic variants relative to the barley reference genome
Summary
Phenological diversity drives adaptation to different areas of cultivation in barley and other cereal crops. The timing of flowering directly influences grain yield, as it needs optimisation to occur during specific seasons to avoid environmental stresses such as frost, heat, and drought. Many of the circadian clock genes are conserved between Arabidopsis and barley, there are many differences specific to cereal grasses. Improvement of barley yield and quality traits, enhancing adaptation to specific production areas, and introgression of favorable alleles into commercial varieties all depend upon the precise identification of the underlying genes. Differences in many alleles that modify phenology are based on genetic variants relative to the barley reference genome. The recent availability of a barley genome assembly with high-confidence sequences allows the identification of phenology-associated gene orthologs
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
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 callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
