Application of the Molecular Marker in Linkage Disequilibrium with Ms, a Restorer-of-fertility Locus, for Improvement of Onion Breeding Efficiency

To analyze the linkage relationships among molecular markers recently reported to be linked to onion (Allium cepa L.) Ms, a restorer-of-fertility locus, in onion (Allium cepa L.), three single nucleotide polymorphism markers were converted into cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS) markers based on onion transcriptome sequences and the rice genome database. Analysis of the recombinants selected from 4,273 segregating plants using CAPS and other linked markers demonstrated the jnurf13 and jnurf610 markers to perfectly co-segregate with the Ms locus. In contrast to jnurf13, the jnurf610 marker was not in perfect linkage disequilibrium with the Ms locus in diverse breeding lines. Thus, the jnurf13 marker and the marker for identification of cytoplasm types were utilized to enhance the efficiency of onion breeding through four applications. First, 89 maintainer lines containing the normal cytoplasm and homozygous recessive Ms genotypes were successfully identified from 100 breeding lines. Second, these two molecular markers were used to analyze the main sources of male-fertile contaminants frequently found in the male-sterile parental lines during F1 hybrid seed production. The majority of the contaminants contained heterozygous Ms genotypes, indicating that pollen grains harboring the dominant Ms genotype may have been introduced during propagation of the maintainer lines. Therefore, the genetic purity of the two maintainer lines was analyzed in the third application, and the results showed that both maintainer lines contained 13-21% off-types. Finally, the two markers were used to increase the seed yield potentials of two open-pollinated varieties containing sterile cytoplasms by removing the plants harboring homozygous recessive and heterozygous Ms genotypes.