Frontiers in Plant Science (Sep 2023)

Identification of southern corn rust resistance QTNs in Chinese summer maize germplasm via multi-locus GWAS and post-GWAS analysis

  • Guoping Shu,
  • Aifang Wang,
  • Xingchuan Wang,
  • Junqiang Ding,
  • Ruijie Chen,
  • Fei Gao,
  • Aifen Wang,
  • Ting Li,
  • Yibo Wang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1221395
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14

Abstract

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Southern corn rust (SCR) caused by Puccinia polysora Underw is a major disease leading to severe yield losses in China Summer Corn Belt. Using six multi-locus GWAS methods, we identified a set of SCR resistance QTNs from a diversity panel of 140 inbred lines collected from China Summer Corn Belt. Thirteen QTNs on chromosomes 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8 were grouped into three types of allele effects and their associations with SCR phenotypes were verified by post-GWAS case-control sampling, allele/haplotype effect analysis. Relative resistance (RRR) and relative susceptibility (RRs) catering to its inbred carrier were estimated from single QTN and QTN-QTN combos and epistatitic effects were estimated for QTN-QTN combos. By transcriptomic annotation, a set of candidate genes were predicted to be involved in transcriptional regulation (S5_145, Zm00001d01613, transcription factor GTE4), phosphorylation (S8_123, Zm00001d010672, Pgk2- phosphoglycerate kinase 2), and temperature stress response (S6_164a/S6_164b, Zm00001d038806, hsp101, and S5_211, Zm00001d017978, cellulase25). The breeding implications of the above findings were discussed.

Keywords