Author(s)

Zanping Han¹, Wang Bin¹, Jun Zhang², Shulei Guo², Hengchao Zhang¹, Lengrui Xu¹, Yanhui Chen²

¹College of Agronomy, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, China.
²College of Agronomy, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, China.

Improvement in seed vigor under adverse condition is an important object in maize breeding nowadays. Because the higher sowing quality of seeds is necessary for the development of the agriculture production and better able to resist all kinds of adversity in the seeds storage. So it is helpful for long-term preservation of germplasm resource. In our study, two connected recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations, which derived from the crosses Yu82 × Shen137 and Yu537A × Shen137 respectively, were evaluated for four related traits of seed vigor under three aging treatments. Meta-analysis was used to integrate genetic maps and detected QTL across two populations. In total, 74 QTL and 20 meta-QTL (mQTL) were detected. All QTLs with contributions (R2) over 10% were consistently detected in at least one of aging treatments and integrated in mQTL. Four key mQTLs (mQTL2-2, mQTL5-3, mQTL6 and mQTL8) with R2 of some initial QTLs > 10% included 5-9 initial QTLs associated with 2-4 traits. Therefore, the chromosome regions for four mQTLs with high QTL co-localization might be hot spots of the important QTLs for the associated traits. Twenty-two key candidate genes regulating four related traits of seed vigor mapped in 14 corresponding mQTLs. In particular, At5g67360, 45238345/At1g70730/At1g09640 and 298201206 were mapped within the important mQTL5-3, mQTL6 and mQTL8 regions, respectively. Fine mapping or construction of single chromosome segment lines for genetic regions of the three mQTLs is worth further study and could be put to use molecular marker-assisted breeding and pyramiding QTLs in maize.

Maize(Zea mays L.), Seed Vigor, RIL, QTL, Artificial Aging

Han, Z. , Bin, W. , Zhang, J. , Guo, S. , Zhang, H. , Xu, L. and Chen, Y. (2018) Mapping of QTLs Associated with Seed Vigor to Artificial Aging Using Two RIL Populations in Maize (Zea mays L.). Agricultural Sciences, 9, 397-415. doi: 10.4236/as.2018.94028.