BackgroundRye is an important European crop used for food, feed, and bioenergy. Several quality and yield-related traits are of agronomic relevance for rye breeding programs. Profound knowledge of the genetic architecture of these traits is needed to successfully implement marker-assisted selection programs. Nevertheless, little is known on quantitative loci underlying important agronomic traits in rye.ResultsWe used 440 F3:4 inbred lines from two biparental populations (Pop-A, Pop-B) fingerprinted with about 800 to 900 SNP, SSR and/or DArT markers and outcrossed them to a tester for phenotyping. The resulting hybrids and their parents were evaluated for grain yield, single-ear weight, test weight, plant height, thousand-kernel weight, falling number, protein, starch, soluble and total pentosan contents in up to ten environments in Central Europe. The quality of the phenotypic data was high reflected by moderate to high heritability estimates. QTL analyses revealed a total of 31 QTL for Pop-A and 52 for Pop-B. QTL x environment interactions were significant (P < 0.01) in most cases but variance of QTL main effect was more prominent.ConclusionsQTL mapping was successfully applied based on two segregating rye populations. QTL underlying grain yield and several quality traits had small effects. In contrast, thousand-kernel weight, test weight, falling number and starch content were affected by several major QTL with a high frequency of occurrence in cross validation. These QTL explaining a large proportion of the genotypic variance can be exploited in marker-assisted selection programs and are candidates for further genetic dissection.
Several rye growing regions of Central Europe suffered from severe drought stress in the last decade. Rye is typically grown on sandy soils with low water-holding capacity in areas with low rainfall, thus drought-tolerant varieties are urgently needed. The main objective of our study was to evaluate the drought stress tolerance of rye hybrids using large-scaled field experiments. Two biparental populations (Pop-A, Pop-B) each consisting of 220 F(2:4) lines from the Petkus gene pool and their parents were evaluated for grain yield testcross performance under irrigated (I) and rainfed (R) regime in six environments. We observed for most environments severe drought stress leading to an average grain yield reduction of 23.8 % for rainfed compared to irrigated regime in drought stress environments. A decomposition of the variance revealed significant (P < 0.01) genotypic and genotype × environment interaction variances but only a minor effect of drought stress on the ranking of the genotypes with regard to grain yield. In conclusion, separate breeding programs for drought-tolerant genotypes are not superior to the currently practiced selection under rainfed conditions without irrigation in hybrid rye breeding in Central Europe.
Winter rye is an ideal crop for the agricultural energy production because of its vigourous growth, high nutrient-and water use efficiency, and low input production. For the use in biogas plants, maximal biomass yield with dry matter contents of >30% is an essential breeding aim. The objectives were to analyse the potential of 25 germplasm resources of various geographic origin for the rapid improvement of biomass yield compared with 22 and 12 full-sib families selected for forage and grain use, respectively. Population per se and testcross performance with two testers were evaluated for early growth, heading, plant height, dry matter content and dry matter yield across seven environments (location-year combinations) harvested as whole plants at late milk-ripening. Dry matter yield ranged, on an average, from 130 to 141 dt/ha for population per se performance and from 150 to 158 dt/ha for testcross performance (0% water content). Genotypic variances were significant (P = 0.01) throughout, entry-mean heritabilities for biomass yield were moderate to high (0.67-0.91). In both materials, germplasm resources and forage rye had on average the highest biomass yield. The best individual entry was a population hybrid with ÔFlorida BlackÕ as pollinator (173 dt/ha). Three released hybrid cultivars selected for high grain yield were among the entries with the lowest biomass yield at milk ripening. Germplasm resources showed significant genotypic correlations between dry matter yield and early growth, heading date, dry matter content in the testcrosses. Genotypic correlations between populations per se and testcrosses were significant and high for germplasm resources and forage rye. In conclusion, germplasm resources have a high potential for maximal biomass yield when whole-plant harvest occurs at milk ripening.
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