Mapping and validation of the quantitative trait loci for leaf stay‐green‐associated parameters in maize

Abstract

Functional stay‐green is generally regarded as a desirable trait of varieties in major crops including maize. In this study, we used an F3:4 recombinant inbred line population with 165 lines from a cross between a stay‐green inbred line (Zheng58) and a model inbred line (B73) using 211 polymorphic simple sequence repeat markers to map quantitative trait loci for three stay‐green‐associated parameters, chlorophyll content, photosystem II photochemical efficiency and stay‐green area, at maturity stage, detected a total of 23 quantitative trait loci (QTL) on nine chromosomes. Single QTL explained 3.7–13.5% of the phenotypic variance. Additionally, we validated some important stay‐green QTL using a heterogeneous inbred family approach and found that the stay‐green‐associated parameters were significantly correlated with the plant yield. This study may contribute to a better insight into the regulatory mechanism behind leaf stay‐green in maize and a novel development of elite maize varieties with delayed leaf senescence through molecular marker‐assisted selection.

A High-Throughput Model-Assisted Method for Phenotyping Maize Green Leaf Area Index Dynamics Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Imagery

“…However, δ had a larger effect than MA big , due to the timing of the drought stress that impacted mostly the thousand kernel weight and harvest grain moisture through an earlier senescence and a shorter grain filling period (Çakir, 2004; Li et al, 2018; Mangani et al, 2018). Previous works (Cairns et al, 2012; Kante et al, 2016; Yang et al, 2017b) have also pointed out that stay-green is one of the major determinant of grain yield, and can explain from 7 to 12% of its variation, which is very similar to the magnitude of δ effect in this study (Table 4). Finally, it is noteworthy that MA big and δ are strongly negatively correlated in both stressed and well-watered environments (Supplementary Figure 4).…”

“…However, green leaf area is influenced by several stresses including nitrogen, water and temperature (Çakir, 2004; Ding et al, 2005; Chen et al, 2018), thus reducing dry matter production and yield. This underlines the importance of green leaf area estimation for several applications such as yield prediction (Baez-Gonzalez et al, 2005; Dente et al, 2008), precision farming (Walthall et al, 2007), and plant breeding (Yang et al, 2017b). Green leaf area can be quantified by the Green Leaf Area Index (GLAI) defined as the one-sided green area of leaves per unit horizontal ground surface area (Chen and Black, 1992).…”

Photosynthetic Metabolism under Stressful Growth Conditions as a Bases for Crop Breeding and Yield Improvement

“…Several QTLs related to leaf angle have been identified in maize and rice ( [172] and references therein), bread wheat [173][174][175], and durum wheat [176], as well as genes associated with changes in leaf angle in maize, rice, and sorghum [172]. On the other hand, the association between QTLs and stay-green has been reported in wheat [137,143,177,178], maize [140,[179][180][181][182], barley [141], sorghum [183][184][185][186], and rice [187]. In the same way, the association between chlorophyll content in the flag leaf and the magnitude of the net assimilation of CO 2 has been reported, and QTLs for chlorophyll content and photosynthesis have been identified in rice [188], wheat [163,189], and barley [167,190].…”

The Senescence (Stay-Green)—An Important Trait to Exploit Crop Residuals for Bioenergy

“…However, Gentinetta et al [34] also observed that visually scored foliar phenotypes showed "unexpected symptoms of senescence" in the F1 and BC1 crosses. Segregating families produced from crosses of stay-green phenotypes revealed that SG trait has a polygenic inheritance [35,36]. Finding marker-trait associations with the SG and developing consistent molecular markers allows the marker assisted characterization for evaluating senescence before any physiological and visible changes.…”

“…Kante et al [43] also found the same region on chromosome 1 associated with chlorophyll levels suggesting that SG may be due to chlorophyll synthesis. Yang et al [36] reported a broad sense heritability for SG measured as leaf stay-green area index at 0.78. They detected 8 QTLs across seven chromosomes (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10) explaining a percentage of phenotypic variation ranging from 4.8% and 13.5%.…”