Abstract
Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) is a perennial warm-season grass that produces high biomass yield. Identification of mechanisms for genetic regulation of biomass traits has potential to facilitate genetic manipulation of switchgrass for enhancing biomass yield. The objective of this study was to identify quantitative trait loci for biomass-related traits in a pseudo-F2 population of switchgrass derived from an upland cross with a lowland switchgrass cultivar. Plant height (HT), crown diameter (CD), and plant biomass (PB) were assessed in field studies in 2015 and 2016. Plant height was positively correlated with PB in both years but only correlated with CD in 2016. Positive correlations between CD and PB were found in both years. Six quantitative trait loci (QTLs) were detected, including three QTLs on chromosome 2b for HT (2015) or CD (2016), two 2 QTLs on chromosome 2a for CD and PB in 2016, and one QTL on chromosome 5b for CD in 2016. The logarithm of the odds scores for these QTLs ranged from 4.9 to 8.2, and percentage variance explained ranged from 7.1 to 12.9%. One QTL on chromosome 2b appeared to simultaneously control HT in 2015 and CD in 2016. Homologs of candidate genes related to cell wall development and biosynthesis, hormone regulation, and metabolism were identified within the confidence interval of these QTLs. The findings from this study indicate that these QTLs can be important signals for genetic control of switchgrass growth.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Parrish DJ, Fike JH, Bransby DI, Samson R (2008) Establishing and managing switchgrass as an energy crop. Forage Grazinglands 42:220
Casler MD (2012) Switchgrass breeding, genetics, and genomics. In: Monti A (ed) Switchgrass. Springer, London, pp 29–54
Guretzky JA, Biermacher JT, Cook BJ, Kering MK, Mosali J (2011) Switchgrass for forage and bioenergy: harvest and nitrogen rate effects on biomass yields and nutrient composition. Plant Soil 339:69–81
Casler MD, Boe AR (2003) Cultivar × environment interactions in switchgrass. Crop Sci 43:2226–2233
Casler MD, Vogel KP, Taliaferro CM, Ehlke NJ, Berdahl JD, Brummer EC, Kallenbach RL, West CP, Mitchell RB (2007) Latitudinal and longitudinal adaptation of switchgrass populations. Crop Sci 47:2249–2260
Price DL, Casler MD (2014a) Inheritance of secondary morphological traits for among-and-within-family selection in upland tetraploid switchgrass. Crop Sci 54:646–653
Boe A, Beck DL (2008) Yield components of biomass in switchgrass. Crop Sci 48:1306–1311
Bhandari HS, Saha MC, Mascia PN, Fasoula VA, Bouton JH (2010) Variation among half-sib families and heritability for biomass yield and other traits in lowland switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.). Crop Sci 50:2355–2363
Bhandari HS, Saha MC, Fasoula VA, Bouton JH (2011) Estimation of genetic parameters for biomass yield in lowland switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.). Crop Sci 51:1525–1533
Price AL, Casler MD (2014) Predictive relationships between plant morphological traits and biomass yield in switchgrass. Crop Sci 54:637–645
Fernandez MGS, Becraft PW, Yin Y, Lübberstedt T (2009) From dwarves to giants? Plant height manipulation for biomass yield. Trends Plant Sci 14:454–461
Yang G, **ng Y, Li S, Ding J, Yue B, Deng K, Li Y, Zhu Y (2006) Molecular dissection of developmental behavior of tiller number and plant height and their relationship in rice (Oryza sativa L.). Hereditas 143:236–245
Liu L, Wu Y, Wang Y, Samuels T (2012) A high-density simple sequence repeat-based genetic linkage map of switchgrass. G3 (Bethesda) 2:357–370
Dong H, Thames S, Liu L, Smith MW, Yan L, Wu Y (2015) QTL map** for reproductive maturity in lowland switchgrass populations. BioEnergy Res 8:1925–1937
Lowry DB, Taylor SH, Bonnette J, Aspinwall MJ, Asmus AL, Keitt TH, Juenger TE (2015) QTLs for biomass and developmental traits in switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). BioEnergy Res 8:1856–1867
Serba DD, Daverdin G, Bouton JH, Devos KM, Brummer EC, Saha MC (2015) Quantitative trait loci (QTL) underlying biomass yield and plant height in switchgrass. BioEnergy Res 8:307–324
Serba DD, Sykes RW, Gjersing EL, Decker SR, Daverdin G, Devos KM, Saha MC (2016) Cell wall composition and underlying QTL in an F1 pseudo-testcross population of switchgrass. BioEnergy Res 9:836–850
Chang D, Wu Y, Liu L, Lu-Thames S, Dong H, Goad C, Bai S, Makaju S, Fang T (2016) Quantitative trait loci map** for tillering-related traits in two switchgrass populations. Plant Genome 9:2
Milano ER, Lowry DB, Juenger TE (2016) The genetic basis of upland/lowland ecotype divergence in switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). G3 (Bethesda) 6:3561–3570
Tornqvist C-E, Taylor M, Jiang Y, Evans J, Buell CR, Kaeppler S, Casler M (2018) Quantitative trait locus map** for flowering time in a lowland x upland switchgrass pseudo-f2 population. Plant Genome 11:1700932
Casler MD, Vermerris M, Dixon RA (2015) Replication concepts for bioenergy research experiments. BioEnergy Res 8:1–16
Evans J, Crisovan E, Barry K, Daum C, Jenkins J, Kunde-Ramamoorthy G, Nandety A, Ngan CY, Vaillancourt B, Wei C, Schmutz J, Kaeppler SM, Casler MD, Buell CR (2015) Diversity and population structure of northern switchgrass as revealed through exome capture sequencing. Plant J 84:800–815
R Core Team (2014) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna
Li G, Serba DD, Saha MC, Bouton JH, Lanzatella CL, Tobias CM (2014) Genetic linkage map** and transmission ratio distortion in a three-generation four-founder population of Panicum virgatum (L.). G3 (Bethesda) 17:913–923
Wuddineh WA, Mazarei M, Zhang J, Poovaiah CR, Mann DGJ, Ziebell A, Sykes RW, Davis MF, Udvardi MK, Stewart CN Jr (2015) Identification and overexpression of gibberellin 2-oxidase (GA2ox) in switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) for improved plant architecture and reduced biomass recalcitrance. Plant Biotech J 13:636–647
Kende H, Bradford K, Brummell D, Cho HT, Cosgrove D, Fleming A, Voesenek L (2004) Nomenclature for members of the expansin superfamily of genes and proteins. Plant Mol Biol 55:311–314
Chrost B, Kolukisaoglu U, Schulz B, Krupinska K (2007) An alpha-galactosidase with an essential function during leaf development. Planta 225:311–320
Preisner M, Wojtasik W, Kostyn K, Boba A, Czuj T, Szopa J, Kulma A (2018) The cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase family in flax: differentiation during plant growth and under stress conditions. J Plant Physiol 221:132–143
Perrin RM, DeRocher AE, Bar-Peled M, Zeng W, Norambuena L, Orellana A, Raikhel NV, Keegstra K (1999) Xyloglucan fucosyltransferase, an enzyme involved in plant cell wall biosynthesis. Science 284:1976–1979
Minic Z, Jouanin L (2006) Plant glycoside hydrolases involved in cell wall polysaccharide degradation. Plant Physiol Biochem 44:435–449
Wang ZY, Nakano T, Gendron J, He J, Chen M, Vafeados D, Chory J (2002) Nuclear-localized BZR1 mediates brassinosteroid-induced growth and feedback suppression of brassinosteroid biosynthesis. Dev Cell 2:505–513
Paredez AR, Somerville CR, Ehrhardt DW (2006) Visualization of cellulose synthase demonstrates functional association with microtubules. Science 312:1491–1495
Hossain Z, Amyot L, McGarvey B, Gruber M, Jung J, Hannoufa A (2012) The translation elongation factor eef-1bβ1 is involved in cell wall biosynthesis and plant development in Arabidopsis thaliana. PLoS One 7(1):e30425
Rao G, Zeng Y, He C, Zhang J (2016) Characterization and putative post-translational regulation of α- and β-tubulin gene families in Salix arbutifolia. Sci Rep 6:19258
Wilmoth JC, Wang S, Tiwari SB, Joshi AD, Hagen G, Guilfoyle TJ, Alonso JM, Ecker JR, Reed JW (2005) NPH4/ARF7 and ARF19 promote leaf expansion and auxin-induced lateral root formation. Plant J 43:118–130
Yeh SY, Chen H-W, Ng C-Y, Lin C-Y, Tseng T-H, Li W-H, Ku MSB (2015) Down-regulation of cytokinin oxidase 2 expression increases tiller number and improves rice yield. Rice 158:36
Zhang S, Wang S, Xu Y, Yu C, Shen C, Qian Q, Geisler M, Jiang D, Qi Y (2015) The auxin response factor, OsARF19, controls rice leaf angles through positively regulating OsGH3−5 and OsBRI1. Plant Cell Environ 38:638–654
Joseph MP, Papdi C, Kozma-Bognár L, Nagy I, López-Carbonell M, Rigó G, Szabados L (2014) The Arabidopsis ZINC FINGER PROTEIN3 interferes with abscisic acid and light signaling in seed germination and plant development. Plant Physiol 165:1203–1220
Funding
Megan Taylor was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), grant no. DE-SC0010631. **ongwei Zhao was supported by the China Scholarship Council (Award no. 201606910017). The authors would like to thank Drs. Mingxi Liu and Zijian Sun and Ms. Yu Cui for assisting in planting, and thank Drs. **n Song, Gang Nie, **cheng Wang, Bing Zeng, **ujie Yin, Qiang Liu and Mr. Zhongjie Ji and Yanyu Yao for assisting in harvesting in the field.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
Supplementary Figure 1
(DOCX 148 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Taylor, M., Tornqvist, CE., Zhao, X. et al. Identification of Quantitative Trait Loci for Plant Height, Crown Diameter, and Plant Biomass in a Pseudo-F2 Population of Switchgrass. Bioenerg. Res. 12, 267–274 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-019-09978-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-019-09978-5