Discrimination of alleles and copy numbers at the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Q</Emphasis> locus in hexaploid wheat using quantitative pyrosequencing

Speltoid spikes are characterized by pyramidal spike morphology featuring an elongated rachis and tenacious glumes. Speltoids are considered undesirable spike aberrants in wheat breeding leading to increased heterogeneity within a cultivar candidate. As a consequence, the presence of speltoids may result in rejection of a cultivar candidate during official field trials or denial of cultivar certification during seed multiplication. A reliable method is, thus, required to assess the occurrence of speltoids, early on in a wheat breeding program. The domestication gene Q located on the long arm of wheat chromosome 5A is known to suppress the speltoid phenotype in wheat. Here, a quantitative pyrosequencing assay was developed to distinguish between normal wheat plants, which possess two copies of the Q allele, and aberrants, which are either aneuploids lacking the correct number of chromosome 5A copies or plants which carry the primitive q allele. An accurate and reproducible determination of the Q gene copy number was achieved for different wheat genotypes based on homoeologous sequence quantification with two primer combinations at the Q locus. Single plants with one to four copies of the Q allele could be detected by quantitative pyrosequencing which corresponded to the occurrence of speltoid (1 Q allele), normal (2 Q alleles), and compact (more than 2 Q alleles) spikes. Q and q specific alleles could be differentiated at SNP position 2299 of the Q gene. This SNP is assumed to be related to the emergence of free-threshing wheat forms. To our knowledge this is the first report for detection of aneuploids and differentiation of Q alleles in bread wheat using pyrosequencing technology. In future, quantitative pyrosequencing assay can be applied in wheat breeding programs to carry out marker-assisted selection against the presence of speltoid spike aberrants.