title: Genetic Analysis in Maize Foundation Parents with Mapping Population and Testcross Population: Ye478 Carried More Favorable Alleles and Using QTL Information Could Improve Foundation Parents.
abstract: The development of maize foundation parents is an important part of genetics and breeding research, and applying new genetic information to produce foundation parents has been challenging. In this study, we focused on quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and general combining ability (GCA) of Ye478, a widely used foundation parent in China. We developed three sets of populations for QTL mapping and to analyze the GCA for some agronomic traits. The assessment of 15 traits resulted in the detection of 251 QTLs in six tested environments, with 119 QTLs identified through a joint analysis across all environments. Further, analyses revealed that most favorable alleles for plant type-related traits were from Ye478, and more than half of the favorable alleles for yield-related traits were from R08, another foundation parent used in southwestern China, suggesting that different types of foundation parents carried different favorable alleles. We observed that the GCA for most traits (e.g., plant height and 100-kernel weight) was maintained in the inbred lines descended from the foundation parents. Additionally, the continuous improvement in the GCA of the descendants of the foundation parents was consistent with the main trend in maize breeding programs. We identified three significant genomic regions that were highly conserved in three Ye478 descendants, including the stable QTL for plant height. The GCA for the traits in the F7generation revealed that the QTLs for the given traitsper sewere affected by additive effects in the same way in different populations.
authors.affiliation: Maize Research Institute, Sichuan Agricultural University Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Yinghong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Xianbin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.affiliation: College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Qianlin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.affiliation: College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Shaowei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bian
authors.affiliation: College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Yufeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science, Sichuan Agricultural University Ya'an, China.
authors.forename: Hanmei
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science, Sichuan Agricultural University Ya'an, China.
authors.forename: Junjie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: College of Agronomy, Guangxi University Nanning, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoqin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Hao
authors.affiliation: Maize Research Institute, Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences Nanning, China.
authors.forename: Weidong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Yubi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Huang
keywords: foundation parent; general combining ability; improvement; maize; quantitative trait loci