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Acta Agron Sin ›› 2011, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (07): 1186-1195.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1006.2011.01186

• CROP GENETICS & BREEDING · GERMPLASM RESOURCES · MOLECULAR GENETICS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Heterosis for Plant Height and Ear Position in Maize Revealed by Quantitative Trait Loci Analysis with Triple Testcross Design

SONG Fang-Wei1,2,PENG Hui-Ru1,2,LIU Ting1,2,ZHANG Yi-Rong1,SUN Qi-Xin1,2,NI Zhong-Fu1,2,*   

  1. 1 State Key Laboratory for Agrobiotechnology / Key Laboratory of Crop Heterosis and Utilization, Ministry of Education / Key Laboratory of Crop Genomics and Genetic Improvement, Ministry of Agriculture / Beijing Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China; 2 National Plant Gene Research Centre (Beijing), Beijing 100193, China
  • Received:2011-01-10 Revised:2011-03-27 Online:2011-07-12 Published:2011-05-11

Abstract: In this study, the genetic basis of plant height and ear position for highly heterotic hybrid Yuyu 22 was analyzed by using TTC (triple testcross) genetic mating design, with a population including 270 testcross progenies. By using composite interval mapping, the number of detected QTLs for plant height and ear position was 20 and 17, respectively. These QTLs for plant height and ear position were classified as overdominant (11 and 8), additive (5 and 6), dominant (2 and 0) and partially dominant (2 and 3). Further analysis indicated that several QTL regions, including Bin1.06 (umc2151–umc1122), Bin3.05 (umc2127–umc2166–umc1539) and Bin7.03 (umc1865–umc1888), contributed to both plant height and ear position, which was consistent with the significant correlation between plant height and ear position. One-dimensional genome scan showed four and seven genome regions of QTL ´ genetic background interactions, 22 and 12 marker pairs with epistatic effects for plant height and ear height respectively and the contribution for phenotypic variation was 3.26–16.58% and 3.44–22.41%, which suggests that the contribution of epistasis to the heterosis of the two traits is important.

Key words: Maize, Plant height, Ear position, Heterosis, QTL

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