Evaluation of agronomic performance and exploratory genome-wide association study of a diverse oat panel for forage use in Taiwan
Journal
Grassland Science
Journal Volume
66
Journal Issue
4
Pages
249-260
Date Issued
2020
Author(s)
Abstract
Oats (Avena sativa L.) produce not only the well-known highly nutritious grain, but valuable forage. In Taiwan, imported oat hay is a popular forage with the dairy cattle industry. However, local forage oat breeding and production have been virtually absent. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the forage performance of oats in Taiwan in order to assess their potential for local oat production. We have introduced 178 oat accessions from 18 breeding programs across North and South America. These breeding lines were evaluated in Northern Taiwan (Taipei) and Southern Taiwan (Hengchun) between autumn 2016 and spring 2017. Early maturing lines reached the flowering stage after ca. 70 or ca. 90?days after sowing in Hengchun and Taipei, respectively, while 49 and 159 lines remained vegetative throughout the growing season in Hengchun and Taipei, respectively. On average, plant height was taller in Taipei than in Hengchun (99.8 vs. 53.2?cm), while dry matter yield per plot was higher in Hengchun than in Taipei (596 vs. 388.4?g/Plot). Maturity and dry matter differences may be related to the differences in daily effective sunlight between locations. Using 1,164 genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), we explored the population structure and the genetic architecture of traits of interest within a subset of 73 oat lines. No obvious sub-populations were observed, which reflected the frequent material exchanges among oat breeders. Fifty-three loci were associated with days to flowering, plant height and dry matter yield; and 12 of them overlapped with loci identified in previous work. The data and results of this study lay the foundations and provide guidelines for further forage oat breeding work in Taiwan. ? 2020 Japanese Society of Grassland Science
Subjects
agronomy; cereal; crop production; forage; genome; subtropical region; tropical region; Hengchun Peninsula; Taipei; Taiwan; Avena; Avena sativa; Bos; Magnoliophyta
Type
journal article