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Exploring new alleles for frost tolerance in winter rye

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Abstract

Key message

Rye genetic resources provide a valuable source of new alleles for the improvement of frost tolerance in rye breeding programs.

Abstract

Frost tolerance is a must-have trait for winter cereal production in northern and continental cropping areas. Genetic resources should harbor promising alleles for the improvement of frost tolerance of winter rye elite lines. For frost tolerance breeding, the identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) and the choice of optimum genome-based selection methods are essential. We identified genomic regions involved in frost tolerance of winter rye by QTL mapping in a biparental population derived from a highly frost tolerant selection from the Canadian cultivar Puma and the European elite line Lo157. Lines per se and their testcrosses were phenotyped in a controlled freeze test and in multi-location field trials in Russia and Canada. Three QTL on chromosomes 4R, 5R, and 7R were consistently detected across environments. The QTL on 5R is congruent with the genomic region harboring the Frost resistance locus 2 (Fr–2) in Triticeae. The Puma allele at the Fr–R2 locus was found to significantly increase frost tolerance. A comparison of predictive ability obtained from the QTL-based model with different whole-genome prediction models revealed that besides a few large, also small QTL effects contribute to the genomic variance of frost tolerance in rye. Genomic prediction models assigning a high weight to the Fr–R2 locus allow increasing the selection intensity for frost tolerance by genome-based pre-selection of promising candidates.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Germany) within the project RYE SELECT (Grant ID 0315946). The authors are grateful to the field and lab team of KWS Lochow GmbH and to Stefan Schwertfirm and Amalie Fiedler from TUM for the technical assistance. The technical assistance of G. Schellhorn, Plant Sciences Department, University of Saskatchewan is also gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank Prof. Dr. H. Friedrich Utz (University of Hohenheim) for providing an extension of PlabMQTL which enabled the comparison of QTL and GP models.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TUM School of Life Sciences, Plant Breeding, Technical University of Munich, Liesel-Beckmann-Str. 2, 85354, Freising, Germany

    Wiltrud Erath, Eva Bauer & Chris-Carolin Schön

  2. Department of Plant Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, 51 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A8, Canada

    D. Brian Fowler

  3. KWS Lochow GmbH, Ferdinand-von-Lochow-Str. 5, 29303, Bergen, Germany

    Andres Gordillo, Viktor Korzun, Malthe Schmidt, Brigitta Schmiedchen & Peer Wilde

  4. Department of Genetics, Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University, Kremlevskaja Str. 18, Kazan, 420008, Russia

    Mira Ponomareva

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  1. Wiltrud Erath
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  2. Eva Bauer
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Correspondence to Eva Bauer or Chris-Carolin Schön.

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Communicated by Diane E. Mather.

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Erath, W., Bauer, E., Fowler, D.B. et al. Exploring new alleles for frost tolerance in winter rye. Theor Appl Genet 130, 2151–2164 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-017-2948-7

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