Genotyping-by-Sequencing Derived High-Density Linkage Map and its Application to QTL Mapping of Flag Leaf Traits in Bread Wheat

Authors

Waseem Hussain, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
P. Stephen Baenziger, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Vikas Belamkar, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Mary J. Guttieri, USDA, Agricultural Research ServiceFollow
Jorge P. Venegas, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Amanda Easterly, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Ahmed Sallam, Assiut UniversityFollow
Jesse Poland, Kansas State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2017

Citation

Scientific REPORTS | 7: 16394

Comments

© The Author(s) 2017

Open access

DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-16006-z

Abstract

Winter wheat parents ‘Harry’ (drought tolerant) and ‘Wesley’ (drought susceptible) were used to develop a recombinant inbred population with future goals of identifying genomic regions associated with drought tolerance. To precisely map genomic regions, high-density linkage maps are a prerequisite. In this study genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) was used to construct the high-density linkage map. The map contained 3,641 markers distributed on 21 chromosomes and spanned 1,959 cM with an average distance of 1.8 cM between markers. The constructed linkage map revealed strong collinearity in marker order across 21 chromosomes with POPSEQ-v2.0, which was based on a high-density linkage map. The reliability of the linkage map for QTL mapping was demonstrated by co-localizing the genes to previously mapped genomic regions for two highly heritable traits, chaff color, and leaf cuticular wax. Applicability of linkage map for QTL mapping of three quantitative traits, flag leaf length, width, and area, identified 21 QTLs in four environments, and QTL expression varied across the environments. Two major stable QTLs, one each for flag leaf length (Qfll.hww-7A) and flag leaf width (Qflw.hww-5A) were identified. The map constructed will facilitate QTL and fine mapping of quantitative traits, map-based cloning, comparative mapping, and in marker-assisted wheat breeding endeavors.