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Title: Molecular, morphological and cytological analysis of diverse Brachypodium distachyon inbred lines

Author
item FILIZ, ERTUGRUL - Sabanci University
item OZDEMIR, BAHAR - Sabanci University
item BUDAK, FIKRET - Ministry Of Agriculture - Turkey
item Vogel, John
item METIN, TUNA - Namik Kemal University
item BUDAK, HIKMET - Sabanci University

Submitted to: Genome
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/28/2009
Publication Date: 9/22/2010
Citation: Filiz, E., Ozdemir, B.S., Budak, F., Vogel, J.P., Metin, T., Budak, H. 2010. Molecular, morphological and cytological analysis of diverse Brachypodium distachyon inbred lines. Genome. 52:876-890

Interpretive Summary: This paper describes the diversity of new inbred lines for the model grass Brachypodium distachyon in Turkey. It describes the characterization of 146 inbred lines both in terms of phenotypic diversity (seed size, flowering time etc.) and genotypic diversity. A considerable amount of diversity was observed indicating that the new inbred lines will be a valuable resource for the plant research community. All material developed in this study will be made freely available to other researchers.

Technical Abstract: Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium) is a small grass with biological and genomic attributes necessary to serve as a model system for all grasses including small grains and grasses being developed as energy crops (e.g. switchgrass and Miscanthus). In order to add natural variation to the toolkit available to plant biologists using Brachypodium as a model system, it is imperative to establish extensive well-characterized germplasm collections. The objectives of this study were to collect Brachypodium accessions from throughout Turkey and then characterize the molecular (nuclear and organelle genome), morphological, and cytological variation within the collection. We collected 164 lines from 45 diverse geographic regions of Turkey and created 146 inbred lines. The majority (122 of 146 inbred lines) of this material was diploid. The similarity matrix for the diploid lines based on AFLP analysis indicated extensive diversity with genetic distances ranging from 0.05 to 0.78. Organelle genome diversity, on the other hand, was low both among and within the lines used in this study. The geographic distribution of genotypes was not significantly correlated with either nuclear or organelle genome variation for the genotypes studied. Phenotypic characterization of the lines showed extensive variation in flowering time (7-22 weeks), seed production (4-193 seeds/plant) and biomass (15-77 g). Chromosome morphology of the collected Brachypodium varies from submetacentric to metacentric except chromosome 5, which is acrocentric. The diverse Brachypodium lines developed in this study will allow experimental approaches dependent upon natural variation to be applied to this new model grass. These results will also help efforts to have a better understanding of complex large genome (i.e., wheat, barley and switchgrass). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------