Rye
GABI RYE-FROST: Exploiting allelic and phenotypic diversity for frost tolerance in winter rye
Persons in charge: Li Yongle, Eva Bauer
Project duration: 01.01.2008-31.12.2010
Project partners: Viktor Korzun, Peer Wilde, KWS LOCHOW GMBH
Project management agency: Project Management Jülich (PTJ)
Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Project description:
Rye (Secale cereale L.) has been shown to be the most freezing tolerant small grain cereal species (Limin and Fowler, 1987) and thus could serve as a model crop for frost tolerance in cereals. The project aims at the exploration of allelic and phenotypic diversity for frost tolerance, a major prerequisite for genetic improvement of this trait. Focussing on the target trait objectives of the project are i) understanding the genetic basis of frost-tolerance in rye, ii) high-resolution association mapping of candidate genes contributing to frost tolerance, iii) analysing the LD within and between selected candidate genes and iv) identifying alleles of superior interest for marker-assisted breeding.
The plant material is derived from five Eastern European and Russian winter rye populations as well as one Middle European population pre-tested for frost tolerance. Since the rye populations are self-incompatible, about 50 plants of each population were crossed to a self-fertile inbred line (Lo152) and about 300 S0 plants were obtained. Each S0 plant represents one gamete of the source population. S0 plants were cloned and selfed seed was harvested to obtain sufficient seed of each S1 line for phenotypic and genotypic analyses. To evaluate frost tolerance, S1 lines will be phenotyped in controlled and semi-controlled environments as well as in field trials. Candidate genes for the target trait will be analysed for their allelic diversity, the extent of LD and the association between detected DNA polymorphisms and frost tolerance variation. Genetic diversity present within the collection will be estimated with a set of genome-wide and neutral SSR-markers that will be further used for the determination of population structure to avoid spurious associations in the statistical association analysis.
A comprehensive EST resource provided by the closely linked project GABI RYE-EXPRESS will help to identify further candidate genes for the association analyses. Genotyping of S0 plants using the SNP Oligo-Pool-Assay platform designed within the scope of GABI RYE-EXPRESS as well as the GABI-TILL (rye subproject) resource will provide data on the allelic variation present in the used collection.
Reference
Limin A.E. and D.B. Fowler (1987) Cold Hardiness of Forage Grasses Grown on the Canadian Prairies. Canadian Journal of Plant Science, 67: 1111-1115