QTL Mapping for Drought Tolerance at Stages of Germination and Seedling in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Using a DH Population

Drought is a major constraint in many wheat( Triticum aestivum L.) production regions. Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) conditioning drought tolerance at stages of germination and seedling in wheat were identified in a double haploid (DH) population derived from the cross, Hanxuan10×Lumai14, using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Interval mapping analysis revealed that QTLs for drought tolerance at germination stage were located on chromosomes 1B, 2B, 5A, 6B, 7A and 7B, respectively, and the most effective QTL was mapped on chromosome 2B, explaining 27.2% of phenotypic variance. The QTLs for drought tolerance at seedling stage were located on 1B, 3B and 7B, respectively, and the most effective QTL was mapped on chromosome 3B, explaining 21.6% of phenotypic variance. Their positions were different from those of QTLs conferring drought tolerance at germination stage, indicating that drought tolerance at germination stage and seedling stage was controlled by different loci. Most of the identified QTLs explained 18% or more of phenotypic variance for drought tolerance at germination and seedling stage, and would be useful in future for marker assisted selection programs and cultivar improvement.

Distribution and Virulence Diversity of Phytophthora sojae in China

By investigating occurrence of Phytophthora root rot in fields and isolating P.sojae fromdiseased plants and soils, the distribution of P.sojae in China was surveyed. In addition tonortheast region, P.sojae existed in Huanghe-Huaihe basin and Yangtze basin too. Eighty- threeisolates of P.sojae isolated from different areas were identified on virulence using 13differential soybean cultivars, abundant virulence diversity was found in P.sojae. The greaterdiversity in virulence of P.sojae was in isolates from soil than from plants. And the greatestvirulence diversity of P.sojae was found in Yangtze basin.

Effects of Different Nitrogen Application Strategies on Yield and Forage Nutritive Quality of Zea mexicana

A pool experiment was carried out to study the effects of different nitrogen applicationstrategies (rates and stages of nitrogen application) on yield and forage nutritivequality of Zea mexicana cultivated in summer, 2002. In the whole growing stage, its stemwas clipped three times at the height of 25cm when it was 110cm high (H1, H2 and H3 standfor the first, second and third harvest stage, respectively). Six indexes includingcrude protein (CP), ether extract (EE), nitrogen free extract (NFE), acid detergentfiber (ADF), crude ash (CA), and general energy (GE) were employed to evaluate the foragenutritive value. The results showed that the content of CP and EE increased but thecontent of CA and ADF decreased under the two nitrogen rates (High-rate N, 600kgha-1;Mid-rate N, 300kgha-1). The fresh and dry harvest biomass of the whole plants on H1 andthose of the leaves on H2 were also improved. But the stalks on H2 and the whole plantson H3 were affected mainly by dressing nitrogen fertilizer. The yield of CP and EE, CA,NFE, and GE was mainly affected by nitrogen rates. The ADF yield increased was due to theincrement of the fresh and dry harvest biomass. Nitrogen applied as base fertilizer forsummer Zea mexicana can be harvested a higher biomass and improve the forage nutritivequality.

Preliminary Study on Geographical Distribution and Evolutionary Relationships Between Cultivated and Wild Adzuki Bean (Vigna angular is var. angularis and var. nipponensis) by AFLP Analysis

A set of representative 146 adzuki (Vigna angular is var. angularis, and var. nipponensis) germplasm from 6 Asian countries traditionally for adzuki bean production, together with an out group standard rice bean (Vigna umbellata), were analyzed by AFLP methodology using 12 informative primer pairs. 313 unambiguous polymorphic bands were created. According to the dendrogram by cluster analysis based on AFLP banding, 143 of the accessions were distinct and revealed enough genetic diversity for identification and classification of accessions within Vigna angularis. A neighbor joining tree was generated using newly developed Innan's nucleotide diversity estimate from the AFLP data. From analysis, 7 distinct evolutionary groups, named as "Chinese cultivated", "Japanese cultivated", "Japanese complex-Korean cultivated", "Chinese wild", "China Taiwan wild", "Nepal-Bhutan cultivated" and "Hymalayan wild", were detected. Nucleotide diversity with geographical distribution of each group is discussed, regarding the evolutionary relationships between wild and cultivated adzuki beans. The preliminary results indicated that cultivated adzuki bean should be domesticated from at least 4 progenitors in at least 3 geographical origins.

Differential Response of Grain Quality to Cold Water Irrigation in Cold Tolerant and Sensitive Lines of Rice

Three rice varieties and several F3 lines with high and low cold tolerance, selected from F3 segregation lines of two crossesMilyang 23/Tong 88-7 and Milyang 23/TR22183 were used to analyze the effects of cold tolerance on the response of grainquality to cold water irrigation. The result showed that cold water irrigation led to the decrease of rice grain size. Thelength, length-width ratio and weight of brown rice grain were more sensitively affected by cold water irrigation than thewidth and thickness. The shape of brown rice grain was not significantly affected by the selection for cold tolerance at theseedling stage (CTS). The gel consistency, amylose content, peak viscosity, cool viscosity, breakdown viscosity andconsistency viscosity were decreased, while alkali digestibility value and protein content were increased by cold waterirrigation. Under normal irrigation condition the physicochemical properties of milled rice and viscogram components ofmilled rice flour were not significantly different between lines with high and low cold tolerance. Under cold water irrigationthe amylose content, peak viscosity, hot viscosity, final viscosity of rice lines with high CTS or high cold tolerance at thebooting stage (CTB) were higher, while the protein content, setback viscosity, breakdown ratio and setback ratio werelower, than those of rice lines with low cold tolerance. This implied that the cold water response of rice grain quality wasless sensitive in the lines with high cold tolerance than in the lines with low cold tolerance, and the varietal improvementfor cold tolerance would be important for grain quality improvement at the same time.

Molecular Mapping of QTLs for Cold Tolerance at the Budburst Period in Rice

The quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for cold tolerance at the budburst period (CTBP) was identified using a F2:3 population including 200 lines derived from a cross of indica and japonica Milyang 23/Jileng 1. A molecular linkage map of 97 SSR markers was constructed using interval mapping and covered a total length of 1 357.3 cM with an average distance of 13.99 cM, between adjacent markers in rice genome. The CTBP of F3 lines was evaluated at 5℃, and the survival seedling rate after treating under low temperature at the budburst period was used as cold tolerance index for CTBP. A continuous distribution near to normal for CTBP was observed in F3 lines, CTBP is a quantitative trait which was controlled by some genes. Three QTLs on chromosomes 2, 4 and 7 which are associated with CTBP were detected on location of RM6-RM240, RM273-RM303, RM214-RM11, respectively, which explained the range of the observed phenotypic variance from 11.5 to 20.5%. qCTBP4 detected on RM273-RM303 of chromosome 4 explained 20.5% of the observed phenotypic variance. The effect of qCTBP4’s allelic gene comes from Jileng 1., MSc; Correspondence

Utilization of Genetic Diversity on Establishing Chinese Soybean （G.max0 Core Collection

Genetic diversity plays a very important role in establishing core collection.In this study,A total of 405 Chinese soybean accessions was selected from the preliminary core collection,which had 5 different ecotypes from three cultivation regions,including northeastern spring sowing soybean(NSpSS),huanghuai summer sowing soybean(HSuSS),southern spring sowing soybean(SSpSS),southern summer sowing soybean(SSuSS),southern autumn sowing soybean(SAuSS).The genetic diversities and genetic relationship of five ecotypes were analyzed at DNA level by using SSR markers in order to provide information for establishemnt of Chinese soybean core collection.A set of 67 SSR primers were used to analyze these accessions,and detected 502 alleles with averaged 7.49 alleles per locus.SAuSS appeared to be the highest number of alleles,HSuSS had the biggest genetic diversity indexes and NSpSS were lowest for both numbers of alleles and genetic diversity indexes among 5 ecotypes.Since five ecotypes differentiated obviously,various sampling strategy for establishing core collection should be adaped for different ecotypes based on the number of alleles and genetic diversity indexes.

Analysis of simple sequence repeats markers derived from Phytophthora sojae expressed sequence tags

Five thousand and eight hundred publicly available expressed sequence tags (ESTs) of Phytophthora sojae were electronically searched and 415 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were identified in 369 ESTs. The average den- sity of SSRs was one SSR per 8.9 kb of EST sequence screened. The most frequent repeats were trinucleotide re- peats (50.1%) and the least frequent were tetranucleotide repeats (8.2%). Forty primer pairs were designed and tested on 5 strains of P. sojae. Thirty-three primer pairs had suc- cessful PCR amplifications. Of the 33 functional primer pairs, 28 primer pairs produced characteristic SSR bands of the expected size, and 15 primer pairs (45.5%) detected poly- morphism among 5 tested strains of P. sojae. Based on the polymorphisms detected with 20 EST-SSR markers, the 5 tested strains of P. sojae were clustered into 3 groups. In this study, the SSR markers of P. sojae were developed for the first time. These markers could be useful for identification, genetic variation study, and molecular mapping of P. sojae and its relative species.

Establishment of a Core Collection for the Chinese annual wild soybean (Glycine Soja)

With more than 6000 accessions collected from across China, the Chinese National Crop Gene Bank (CNCGB) holds the largest collection of annual wild soybean (Glycine Soja) germplasm in the world. To facilitate the management and utilization of these germplasm collections, it is important to establish a Core Collection. This study compares five sampling strategies, namely random, constant, proportional, logarithmic and genetic diversity-based, to establish a Core Collection for the annual wild soybean germplasm. Among the strategies evaluated, the genetic di- versity-based was found to be the simplest and most efficient. Using hierarchical classification and cluster analysis, in the genetic diversity diversity-based strategy, 652 accessions, accounting for 10.65% of the total 6172 accessions, were se- lected out to represent the total accessions. The established Core Collection has the following features: (i) the 21 de- scriptors observed in the entire collection were compared by the Core Collection, all 18 quality characters of entire collec- tion were preserved by core collection, and coincidence rate of average was 98.4%; (ii) the variant of 13 descriptors of the two collections was very similar, with the coincidence index being 0.96; (iii) the coincidence rate of genetic diversity be- tween the two collections was 81.38% DNA alleles; (iv) the geographic distribution pattern of core collection was the same as the entire collection; (v) molecular marker analysis by 20 SSR primer pairs on 299 accessions showed that the Core Collection covered 83.64% of the entire collection. It thus is concluded that the established Core Collection is rep- resentative and will be a valuable entry point for better evaluation and more efficient utilization of the genetic re- sources available in the annual wild soybean germplasm bank.