Genetic Structure of Modern Durum Wheat Cultivars and Mediterranean Landraces Matches with Their Agronomic Performance

A collection of 172 durum wheat landraces from 21 Mediterranean countries and 20 modern cultivars were phenotyped in 6 environments for 14 traits including phenology, biomass, yield and yield components. The genetic structure of the collection was ascertained with 44 simple sequence repeat markers that identified 448 alleles, 226 of them with a frequency lower than 5%, and 10 alleles per locus on average. In the modern cultivars all the alleles were fixed in 59% of the markers. Total genetic diversity was HT = 0.7080 and the genetic differentiation value was GST = 0.1730. STRUCTURE software allocated 90.1% of the accessions in five subpopulations, one including all modern cultivars, and the four containing landrace related to their geographic origin: eastern Mediterranean, eastern Balkans and Turkey, western Balkans and Egypt, and western Mediterranean. Mean yield of subpopulations ranged from 2.6 t ha-1 for the western Balkan and Egyptian landraces to 4.0 t ha-1 for modern cultivars, with the remaining three subpopulations showing similar values of 3.1 t ha-1. Modern cultivars had the highest number of grains m-2 and harvest index, and the shortest cycle length. The diversity was lowest in modern cultivars (HT = 0.4835) and highest in landraces from the western Balkans and Egypt (HT = 0.6979). Genetic diversity and AMOVA indicated that variability between subpopulations was much lower (17%) than variability within them (83%), though all subpopulations had similar biomass values in all growth stages. A dendrogram based on simple sequence repeat data matched with the clusters obtained by STRUCTURE, improving this classification for some accessions that have a large admixture. landraces included in the subpopulation from the eastern Balkans and Turkey were separated into two branches in the dendrogram drawn with phenotypic data, suggesting a different origin for the landraces collected in Serbia and Macedonia. The current study shows a reliable relationship between genetic and phenotypic population structures, and the connection of both with the geographic origin of the landraces.The research was funded by the Ministerio de Economía y competitividad project AGL-2006-09226-C02-01, and Dr. Jose Miguel Soriano is funded by Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (http://www.mineco.gob.es/)

A survey of flowering genes reveals the role of gibberellins in floral control in rose

Exhaustive studies on flowering control in annual plants have provided a framework for exploring this process in other plant species, especially in perennials for which little molecular data are currently available. Rose is a woody perennial plant with a particular flowering strategy—recurrent blooming, which is controlled by a recessive locus (RB). Gibberellins (GA) inhibit flowering only in non-recurrent roses. Moreover, the GA content varies during the flowering process and between recurrent and non-recurrent rose. Only a few rose genes potentially involved in flowering have been described, i.e. homologues of ABC model genes and floral genes from EST screening. In this study, we gained new information on the molecular basis of rose flowering: date of flowering and recurrent blooming. Based on a candidate gene strategy, we isolated genes that have similarities with genes known to be involved in floral control in Arabidopsis (GA pathway, floral repressors and integrators). Candidate genes were mapped on a segregating population, gene expression was studied in different organs and transcript abundance was monitored in growing shoot apices. Twenty-five genes were studied. RoFT, RoAP1 and RoLFY are proposed to be good floral markers. RoSPY and RB co-localized in our segregating population. GA metabolism genes were found to be regulated during floral transition. Furthermore, GA signalling genes were differentially regulated between a non-recurrent rose and its recurrent mutant. We propose that flowering gene networks are conserved between Arabidopsis and rose. The GA pathway appears to be a key regulator of flowering in rose. We postulate that GA metabolism is involved in floral initiation and GA signalling might be responsible for the recurrent flowering character