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Divergence in flowering time is a major component contributing to reproductive isolation between two wild rice species (Oryza rufipogon and O. nivara)

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Abstract

It is of critical importance for our understanding of speciation process to determine the forms of reproductive isolation and their relative importance in species divergence. Oryza nivara and O. rufipogon are direct ancestors of Asian cultivated rice and a progenitor-daughter species pair. Investigating the reproductive isolation between them provides insights into plant speciation and helps understanding of the rice domestication. Here, we quantitatively measured the major components of reproductive isolation between the two species based on common garden and crossing experiments for three pairs of sympatric populations in Nepal, Cambodia and Laos. We revealed significant differences in the flowering times between species pairs, with O. nivara flowering much earlier than O. rufipogon. A very weak reduction in seed set but no reduction in F1 viability and fertility were detected for the crosses between species relative to those within species. Moreover, we detected asymmetrical compatibility between species and found that emasculation significantly decreased pollination success in O. nivara but not in O. rufipogon. Our study demonstrates that the divergence between O. nivara and O. rufipogon is maintained almost entirely by the difference in flowering times and suggests that differential flowering times contribute to both habitat preferences and reproductive isolation between species.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Bao-Rong Lu, Wen-Li Chen, Cheng-Bin Chen, Hua-Zhong Zeng, Yun-Tao Liang for their helps in the field surveys and common garden experiment. We also thank the International Rice Research Institute (Los Banos, Philippines) for providing seed samples. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91731301), the grants from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB31000000, XDA08020103) and CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Xun Xu, Qing-Lin Meng, Mu-Fan Geng, Ning-Ning Ren, Lian Zhou, Yu-Su Du, Zhe Cai, Mei-Xia Wang, Xin Wang, Xiu-Hua Wang, Jing-Dan Han, Shuai Jiang, Chun-Yan Jing, Rong Liu, Fu-Min Zhang & Song Ge

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Xun Xu, Qing-Lin Meng, Mu-Fan Geng, Ning-Ning Ren, Mei-Xia Wang, Xin Wang, Xiu-Hua Wang, Fu-Min Zhang & Song Ge

  3. National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement, Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

    Xiao-Ming Zheng & Qing-Wen Yang

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  1. Xun Xu
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  2. Qing-Lin Meng
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Correspondence to Song Ge.

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Supporting Information

Figure S1 Variation of first heading of three pairs of O. rufipogon (blue) and O. nivara (red) populations from 2011 to 2013 in the common garden experiment. Boxes and horizontal bars represent the central 50% and median of heading dates, respectively. Dots represent the outliers beyond 1.5 times the interquartile range. Numbers of individuals (O. rufipogon/O. nivara) that were observed are in parentheses.

Table S1 Information on the O. rufipogon and O. nivara populations used in this study. N, number of individuals sampled

Table S2 Flowering phenology of three pairs of O. rufipogon and O. nivara populations in the common garden expriment in three consecutive years in Guanxi, China

Table S3 Summary of different types of crosses for six O. rufipogon and O. nivara populations

Table S4 Seed set of the self-pollinations with and without emasculation. em, emasculation; ns, no significance; **, P < 0.01; ***, P < 0.001

Table S5 Significant tests for the seed sets between different types of crosses. ns, no significance; ***, P<0.001

Table S6 Significant tests for the viability of F1 hybrids between different types of crosses. Level of significances is listed in the following order: germination rate, seedling survival rate and total survival rate. ns, no significance; *, P<0.05; ***, P<0.001

Table S7 Viability and fertility of the F1 hybrids between pairs of species populations. *, this index is the absolute contribution (AC) of germination rate (AC1) and seedling survival (AC2) to the total isolation, and zero represents a higher fitness of F1 hybrids relative to their parents

Table S8 Design of crossing experiments. Population codes are the same to those in Table S1 in Supporting Information. Numbers of crosses are in the parentheses

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Xu, X., Meng, QL., Geng, MF. et al. Divergence in flowering time is a major component contributing to reproductive isolation between two wild rice species (Oryza rufipogon and O. nivara). Sci. China Life Sci. 63, 1714–1724 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-019-1678-6

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