title: Exploitation of interspecific diversity for monocot crop improvement.
abstract: In many cultivated crop species there is limited genetic variation available for the development of new higher yielding varieties adapted to climate change and sustainable farming practises. The distant relatives of crop species provide a vast and largely untapped reservoir of genetic variation for a wide range of agronomically important traits that can be exploited by breeders for crop improvement. In this paper, in what we believe to be the largest introgression programme undertaken in the monocots, we describe the transfer of the entire genome of Festuca pratensis into Lolium perenne in overlapping chromosome segments. The L. perenne/F. pratensis introgressions were identified and characterised via 131 simple sequence repeats and 1612 SNPs anchored to the rice genome. Comparative analyses were undertaken to determine the syntenic relationship between L. perenne/F. pratensis and rice, wheat, barley, sorghum and Brachypodium distachyon. Analyses comparing recombination frequency and gene distribution indicated that a large proportion of the genes within the genome are located in the proximal regions of chromosomes which undergo low/very low frequencies of recombination. Thus, it is proposed that past breeding efforts to produce improved varieties have centred on the subset of genes located in the distal regions of chromosomes where recombination is highest. The use of alien introgression for crop improvement is important for meeting the challenges of global food supply and the monocots such as the forage grasses and cereals, together with recent technological advances in molecular biology, can help meet these challenges.
authors: Division of Plant and Crop Sciences, School of Biosciences, The University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington Campus, Loughborough LE12 5RD, UK. j.king@nottingham.ac.uk
authors: J
authors: J
authors: King
authors: I
authors: I
authors: Armstead
authors: J
authors: J
authors: Harper
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Ramsey
authors: J
authors: J
authors: Snape
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Waugh
authors: C
authors: C
authors: James
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Thomas
authors: D
authors: D
authors: Gasior
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Kelly
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Roberts
authors: P
authors: P
authors: Gustafson
authors: I
authors: I
authors: King
mesh_terms: D058431:Brachypodium / Q000235:genetics; D002874:Chromosome Mapping / Q000379:methods; D032461:Chromosomes, Plant; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000235:genetics*; D031751:Festuca / Q000235:genetics*; D022761:Gene Transfer, Horizontal; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D008040:Genetic Linkage; D014644:Genetic Variation; D018745:Genome, Plant; D001467:Hordeum / Q000235:genetics; D008129:Lolium / Q000235:genetics*; D008540:Meiosis; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D045868:Sorghum / Q000235:genetics; D026801:Synteny; D014908:Triticum / Q000235:genetics