Large-scale integration of meta-QTL and genome-wide association study identifies genomic regions and candidate genes for photosynthetic efficiency traits in bread wheat

作者：Ming Chen, Tao Chen, Yun Li, Zhuo Che, Jingfu Ma, Binxue Kong, Jiangying Long, Chunhua Cheng, Kaiqi Guo, Peipei Zhang, Lijian Guo, Delong Yang · 发表于：BMC Genomics · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1186/s12864-025-11472-6 · 被引用次数：8 · 研究领域：Wheat and Barley Genetics and Pathology、Genetic Mapping and Diversity in Plants and Animals、Plant pathogens and resistance mechanisms

BACKGROUND: Improving photosynthetic efficiency is an essential strategy for advancing wheat breeding progress. Integrating wheat genetic resources provides an opportunity to discover pivotal genomic regions and candidate genes (CGs) for photosynthetic efficiency traits in wheat. RESULTS: A large-scale meta-QTL (MQTL) analysis was performed with 1363 initial quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for photosynthetic efficiency traits extracted from 66 independent QTL mapping studies over the past decades. Consequently, 718 initial QTLs were refined into 74 MQTLs, which were distributed on all wheat chromosomes except 1D, 3 A, 4B, and 5B. Compared with the confidence interval (CI) of the initial QTL, the CI of the identified MQTL was 0.03 to 10.97 cM, with an average of 1.46 cM, which was 20.46 times narrower than that of the original QTL. The maximum explained phenotypic variance (PVE) of the MQTL ranged from 7.43 to 20.42, with an average of 11.97, which was 1.07 times higher than that of the original QTL. Of these, 54 MQTLs were validated using genome-wide association study (GWAS) data from different natural populations in previous research. A total of 3,102 CGs were identified within the MQTL intervals, where 342 CGs share homology with rice, and 1,043 CGs are highly expressed in leaves, spikes, and stems. These CGs were mainly involved in porphyrin metabolism, glyoxylate, dicarboxylate metabolism, carbon metabolism and photosynthesis antenna proteins metabolism pathways by the in ...