QTL mapping for flowering-time and photoperiod insensitivity of cotton Gossypium darwinii Watt

Abstract

Most wild and semi-wild species of the genus Gossypium are exhibit photoperiod-sensitive flowering. The wild germplasm cotton is a valuable source of genes for genetic improvement of modern cotton cultivars. A bi-parental cotton population segregating for photoperiodic flowering was developed by crossing a photoperiod insensitive irradiation mutant line with its pre-mutagenesis photoperiodic wild-type G. darwinii Watt genotype. Individuals from the F2 and F3 generations were grown with their parental lines and F1 hybrid progeny in the long day and short night summer condition (natural day-length) of Uzbekistan to evaluate photoperiod sensitivity, i.e., flowering-time during the seasons 2008–2009. Through genotyping the individuals of this bi-parental population segregating for flowering-time, linkage maps were constructed using 212 simple-sequence repeat (SSR) and three cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS) markers. Six QTLs directly associated with flowering-time and photoperiodic flowering were discovered in the F2 population, whereas eight QTLs were identified in the F3 population. Two QTLs controlling photoperiodic flowering and duration of flowering were common in both populations. In silico annotations of the flanking DNA sequences of mapped SSRs from sequenced cotton (G. hirsutum L.) genome database has identified several potential ‘candidate’ genes that are known to be associated with regulation of flowering characteristics of plants. The outcome of this research will expand our understanding of the genetic and molecular mechanisms of photoperiodic flowering. Identified markers should be useful for marker-assisted selection in cotton breeding to improve early flowering characteristics.

Genetic Variability of Morphological, Flowering, and Biomass Quality Traits in Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.)

“…As in the present study, extensive genetic studies have shown large heritability values for cell wall components (cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin) in other fiber crops, such as poplar and eucalyptus (Raymond and Schimleck, 2002;Klasnja et al, 2003;Schimleck et al, 2004;Poke et al, 2006;Davis, 2008), miscanthus (Slavov et al, 2014;Van Der Weijde et al, 2017), switchgrass (Mclaughlin et al, 2006;Boe and Lee, 2007), and maize (Torres et al, 2015). Furthermore, similar heritability values for flowering time were reported in several plant species such as almond [reviewed in Sánchez-Pérez et al (2014)], apricot (Campoy et al, 2011), arabidopsis (Sasaki et al, 2015), cotton (Kushanov et al, 2017), flax (Soto-Cerda et al, 2014;You et al, 2017), and rice (Takahashi et al, 2001;Huang et al, 2010). It seems plausible that a large fraction of the phenotypic variation of biomass and flowering traits might be controlled by highly "robust genetic systems," although they are highly complex and polygenic traits, since respectively~4,000 (Wang et al, 2012) and~300 genes are estimated to be involved in cell wall synthesis and flowering in arabidopsis (Wang et al, 2012;Bouché et al, 2016).…”

Genomic analyses reveal the genetic basis of early maturity and identification of loci and candidate genes in upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.)

“…Linkage analysis is an effective tool for identifying genes that control some of the most important morphological changes during domestication and improvement (Doebley et al ., 2006). Over the past decade, many quantitative trait loci (QTLs) related to early maturity traits have been identified (Guo et al ., 2008; Jia et al ., 2016; Kushanov et al ., 2017; Li et al ., 2013a; Li et al ., 2016; Li et al ., 2017; Su et al ., 2016b; Zhang et al ., 2016). To assess whether the sweep regions associated with domestication colocalize with loci known to control early maturity‐related traits, we overlapped selection sweeps with the locations of known QTL hotspots.…”

Genetic Diversity, QTL Mapping, and Marker-Assisted Selection Technology in Cotton (Gossypium spp.)

“…Using more than four thousand SSR markers, researchers identified about 60 loci, associated with early maturing traits of cotton ( Li et al, 2013b ). Recently, using 212 SSR and 3 cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS) markers, 6 QTLs were identified that directly associated with flowering time and photoperiodic flowering in the F 2 population, whereas 7 QTLs were discovered in F 3 generation ( Kushanov et al, 2017 ). Li et al (2020b) have reported a cotton genome variation map that is generated by the re-sequencing of 436 cotton accessions ( Li et al, 2020b ).…”