Genome-Wide Association Study Dissects the Genetic Architecture of Maize Husk Tightness

Frontiers in Plant Science
Siqi JiangZhenhai Cui

Abstract

The husk is a leafy outer tissue that encloses a maize ear. Previously, we identified the optimum husk structure by measuring the husk length, husk layer number, husk thickness and husk width. Husk tightness (HTI) is a combined trait based on the above four husk measurements. Unveiling the genetic basis of HTI will aid in guiding the genetic improvement of maize for mechanical harvesting and for protecting the ear from pest damage and pathogen infection. Here, we used a maize associate population of 508 inbred lines with tropical, subtropical and temperate backgrounds to analyze the genetic architecture of HTI. Evaluating the phenotypic diversity in three different environments showed that HTI exhibited broad natural variations and a moderate heritability level of 0.41. A diversity analysis indicated that the inbred lines having a temperate background were more loosely related than those having a tropical or subtropical background. HTI showed significant negative correlations with husk thickness and width, which indicates that thicker and wider husks wrapped the ear tighter than thinner and slimmer husks. Combining husk traits with ∼1.25 million single nucleotide polymorphisms in a genome-wide association study revealed 27 vari...Continue Reading

References

Dec 12, 2001·The Plant Journal : for Cell and Molecular Biology·M SuzukiD R McCarty
Sep 25, 2003·Annual Review of Plant Biology·Sherry A Flint-GarciaEdward S Buckler
Sep 5, 2008·International Journal of Plant Genomics·Carolyn J LawrenceDarwin A Campbell
May 3, 2014·Plant Physiology·Shuanglong HuangClaudio Stasolla
Jul 26, 2018·TAG. Theoretical and applied genetics. Theoretische und angewandte Genetik·Zhenhai CuiYan He
Aug 20, 2018·Molecular Biology Reports·Kai ShuWenyu Yang

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
genotyping
RNA-Seq
PCA

Software Mentioned

GCTA
SAS
Bowtie
PopLDdecay
PLINK
FarmCPU
Cufflinks
R
TopHat

Related Concepts