title: OsPRR37 and Ghd7 are the major genes for general combining ability of DTH, PH and SPP in rice.
abstract: Artificial selection of high yield crops and better livestock is paramount importance in breeding programs. Selection of elite parents with preferred traits from a phalanx of inbred lines is extremely laborious, time-consuming and highly random. General combining ability (GCA) was proposed and has been widely used for the evaluation of parents in hybrid breeding for more than half a century. However, the genetic and molecular basis of GCA has been largely overlooked. Here, we present two pleotropic QTLs are accounting for GCA of days to heading (DTH), plant height (PH) and spikelet per panicle (SPP) using an F2-based NCII design, the BC3F2 population as well as a set of nearly isogenic lines (NILs) with five testers. Both GCA1 and GCA2 were loss-of-function gene in low-GCA parent and gain-of-function gene in high-GCA parent, encoding the putative Pseudo-Response Regulators, OsPRR37 and Ghd7, respectively. Overexpression of GCA1 in low-GCA parent significantly increases GCA effects in three traits. Our results demonstrate that two GCA loci associate with OsPRR37 and Ghd7 and reveal that the genes responsible for important agronomic traits could simultaneously account for GCA effects.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice and College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 430072, China.
authors.forename: Chuan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice and College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 430072, China.
authors.forename: Gaoyuan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice and College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 430072, China.
authors.forename: Yanhao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice and College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 430072, China.
authors.forename: Xuefeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice and College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 430072, China.
authors.forename: Zhibin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice and College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 430072, China.
authors.forename: Zhenwei
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice and College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 430072, China.
authors.forename: Daiming
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice and College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 430072, China.
authors.forename: Daichang
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D032461:Chromosomes, Plant; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000235:genetics; D003433:Crosses, Genetic; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D017343:Genes, Plant; D005838:Genotype; D056626:Inflorescence / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000235:genetics; D012275:Oryza / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000235:genetics*; D010641:Phenotype; D000069600:Plant Breeding; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D015398:Signal Transduction; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D014157:Transcription Factors