Association of the Recessive Allele vrn-D1 With Winter Frost Tolerance in Bread Wheat

Abstract

Winter frost has been considered the primary limiting factor in wheat production. Shimai 12 is an elite wheat cultivar grown in central and southern Hebei province of China, but sensitive to winter frost. In this study, the winter frost tolerant cultivar Lunxuan 103 was bred by introducing the recessive allele vrn-D1 from winter wheat Shijiazhuang 8 (frost tolerance) into Shimai 12 using marker-assisted selection (MAS). Different from Shimai 12, Lunxuan 103 exhibited a winter growth habit with strong winter frost tolerance. In the Shimai 12 × Shijiazhuang 8 population, the winter progenies (vrn-D1vrn-D1) had significantly lower winter-killed seedling/tiller rates than spring progenies (Vrn-D1aVrn-D1a), and the consistent result was observed in an association population. Winter frost damage caused a significant decrease in grain yield and spike number/m2 in Shimai 12, but not in Lunxuan 103 and Shijiazhuang 8. The time-course expression analysis showed that the transcript accumulation levels of the cold-responsive genes were higher in Lunxuan 103 and Shijiazhuang 8 than in Shimai 12. Lunxuan 103 possessed the same alleles as its parents in the loci for plant height, vernalization, and photoperiod, except for the vernalization gene Vrn-D1. An analysis of genomic composition showed that the two parents contributed similar proportions of genetic compositions to Lunxuan 103. This study provides an example of the improvement of winter frost tolerance by introducing the recessive vernalization gene in bread wheat.

Effects of Fhb1, Fhb2 and Fhb5 on Fusarium Head Blight Resistance and the Development of Promising Lines in Winter Wheat

“…The primer information of all the markers is listed in Supplementary Table S10 . The primers specific for genes conferring plant height and vernalization were used to differentiate the alleles in recurrent parents, donors and promising DH lines according to the methods described by Zhang et al [ 35 ]. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed with an initial denaturation at 94 °C for 5 min, 35 cycles of 94 °C for 30 s and annealing at 60–64 °C for 30 s and 72 °C for 30 s–2 min, with a final extension at 72 °C for 10 min.…”