Main effects, epistasis, and environmental interactions of quantitative trait Loci for fusarium head blight resistance in a recombinant inbred population

ABSTRACT Chinese Spring Sumai 3 chromosome 7A disomic substitution line (CS-SM3-7ADS) is highly resistant to Fusarium head blight (FHB), and an F(7) population of recombinant inbred lines derived from the cross CS-SM3-7ADS x Annong 8455 was evaluated for resistance to FHB to investigate main effects, epistasis, and environmental interactions of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for FHB resistance. A molecular linkage map consists of 501 simple sequence repeat and amplified fragment length polymorphism markers. A total of 10 QTLs were identified with significant main effects on the FHB resistance using MapQTL and QTLMapper software. Among them, CS-SM3-7ADS carries FHB-resistance alleles at five QTLs on chromosomes 2D, 3B, 4D, and 6A. One QTL on 3BS had the largest effect and explained 30.2% of the phenotypic variance. Susceptible QTLs were detected on chromosomes 1A, 1D, 4A, and 4B. A QTL for enhanced FHB resistance was not detected on chromosome 7A of CS-SM3-7ADS; therefore, the increased FHB resistance in CS-SM3-7ADS was not due to any major FHB-resistance QTL on 7A of Sumai 3, but more likely was due to removal of susceptible alleles of QTLs on 7A of Chinese Spring. QTLMapper detected nine pairs of additive-additive interactions at 17 loci that explained 26% phenotypic variance. QTL-environment interactions explained 49% of phenotypic variation, indicating that the environments significantly affected the expression of the QTLs, especially these epistasis QTLs. Adding FHB-enhancing QTLs or removal of susceptible QTLs both may significantly enhance the degree of wheat resistance to FHB in a wheat cultivar.