Mapping of fertility restorers in CMS perennial ryegrass

Contact person: Timothy Sykes

Partners: Steven Yates and Bruno Studer

Project description: This project aims to identify the gene(s) or genomic region(s) responsible for fertility restoration of cytoplasmic male sterility in perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.).

Cytoplasmic Male Sterility (CMS) is a maternally inherited trait, originating from the mitochondrial genome, which causes pollen abortion. Male fertility can be restored through the action of nuclear genes and the identification of markers for these genes is an important part of any CMS based hybrid breeding scheme. A population of plants segregating for restoration of fertility will be sequenced and genotyped, and used for quantitative trait locus analysis. To complement this, RNA sequencing of flowers from known restoring plants will be performed to identify any unique genes linked to restoration. As perennial ryegrass is an outcrossing species this will allow CMS to be utilised by breeders allowing them to easily maintain breeding lines used in hybrid seed production.

References:
Islam, Md S., Bruno Studer, Stephen L. Byrne, Jacqueline D. Farrell, Frank Panitz, Christian Bendixen, Ian M. Møller, and Torben Asp. "The genome and transcriptome of perennial ryegrass mitochondria." BMC genomics 14, no. 1 (2013): 202.

Enlarged view: CMS in perennial ryegrass — Figure 1. Shows the phenotypic difference between a CMS unaffected plant and a plant affected by a particular CMS system at the spikelet, anther and pollen levels (Islam et al., 2013).