99-6 Late-Season Drought Tolerance in Maize and Sorghum.
See more from this Division: C01 Crop Breeding & Genetics
See more from this Session: Symposium--Adaptation Of Temperate Crops To Climate Change
Abstract:
Sorghum is an important crop grown in drought prone environments around the world and an important crop model for studying plant adaptation to water-limited environments. Sorghum breeders have been successful in developing drought tolerant sorghum hybrids using stay-green as a phenotype. The ability of annual crop species to delay senescence or “stay-green” throughout the grain filling period has been associated with increased yield, decreased lodging, and stalk rot resistance in sorghum. Genetic analyses of stay-green in sorghum suggest the trait is controlled by four to six loci that have been integrated into commercial programs by marker-assisted breeding.
The goal of our research is to characterize the genetic architecture of stay-green in maize. Maize exhibits substantial genetic variation for stay-green. We evaluated the Nested Association Mapping (NAM) populations of maize and testcross hybrids with PHZ51 for variation in stay-green in multi-location trials. Joint linkage mapping was used to identify multiple QTL for stay-green across several linkage groups with sources of stay-green alleles coming from diverse genetic backgrounds. Comparisons between maize and sorghum for map positions of these stay-green QTL indicate that two of the major loci occur in syntenous regions. Identification and integration of stay-green genes into commercial programs provides the opportunity to sustainably enhance the productivity of maize and sorghum in drought environments.
See more from this Division: C01 Crop Breeding & Genetics
See more from this Session: Symposium--Adaptation Of Temperate Crops To Climate Change