Pleiotropy Structures Plant Height and Seed Weight Scaling in Barley despite Long History of Domestication and Breeding Selection

Abstract

Size scaling describes the relative growth rates of different body parts of an organism following a positive correlation. Domestication and crop breeding often target the scaling traits in the opposite directions. The genetic mechanism of the size scaling influencing the pattern of size scaling remains unexplored. Here, we revisited a diverse barley ( Hordeum vulgare L.) panel with genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) profile and the measurement of their plant height and seed weight to explore the possible genetic mechanisms that may lead to a correlation of the two traits and the influence of domestication and breeding selection on the size scaling. Plant height and seed weight are heritable and remain positively correlated in domesticated barley regardless of growth type and habit. Genomic structural equation modeling systematically evaluated the pleiotropic effect of individual SNP on the plant height and seed weight within a trait correlation network. We discovered seventeen novel SNPs (quantitative trait locus) conferring pleiotropic effect on plant height and seed weight, involving genes with function in diverse traits related to plant growth and development. Linkage disequilibrium decay analysis revealed that a considerable proportion of genetic markers associated with either plant height or seed weight are closely linked in the chromosome. We conclude that pleiotropy and genetic linkage likely form the genetic bases of plant height and seed weight scaling in barley. Our findings contribute to understanding the heritability and genetic basis of size scaling and open a new venue for seeking the underlying mechanism of allometric scaling in plants.

Identification of Markers Associated with Wheat Dwarf Virus (WDV) Tolerance/Resistance in Barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. vulgare) Using Genome-Wide Association Studies

“…These two traits are controlled by several genes and are positively correlated [ 41 ]. He et al [ 45 ] reported eight markers on barley chromosomes 2H and 5H that are associated with plant height and thousand-grain weight.…”

The spatial overlapping regulated by nitrogen promotes the Spartina alterniflora potential regenerated invasion in coastal wetlands

“…Seeds are concentrated in the 0-5 cm soil depth, and different aboveground community coverage has different ability to capture seeds. The number of plants per unit area gradually increased with the increase of aboveground community coverage, and the ability to capture different types of seeds gradually increased, thus reducing the dominance index of dominant species in the soil seed bank (He et al 2023;Khalaj et al 2023). Compared with the 0-5 cm soil depth seed bank, the trend of dominance index in the two communities is not consistent in the 5-10 cm soil depth, and the dominance index of germination seedlings under medium coverage P. australis community is the lowest.…”

Evolutionary pathways to lower biomass allocation to the seed coat in crops: insights from allometric scaling

“…Interestingly, larger seeds tend to have less biomass allocation to their coats than expected given their size – that is coat and kernel weights scale allometrically with a slope < 1 (Wu et al ., 2019; Chen et al ., 2020). This suggests that pleiotropy or genetic linkage may pose constraints to the free variation of kernel and coat sizes (He et al ., 2023).…”