Diploid Strawberry, fragaria vesca, fruitless mutants

Authors: Slovin, Janet

Submitted to: HortScience
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/6/2020
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Strawberries are an important horticultural crop, and consumers demand high quality, long lasting fruit. Using mutation as a tool to help us identify which genes are controlling growth and development of strawberries, we can provide breeders with information they require to improve quality and production. We identified several mutants of the woodland strawberry that do not make fruit. Using microscopy, we have characterized their anthers, the male reproductive organs, to determine if pollen development is normal. Normal pollen is required for fruit production. We found one mutant that fails to make pollen at all, and three that make abnormal pollen. These mutants will allow plant researchers to identify genes controlling anther and pollen development so that breeders can use this information to improve strawberry fruit production.

Technical Abstract: The knowledge of which genes underlie a given trait is highly useful for developing molecular markers for breeding, and is the foundation for future genomic crop improvements. The dessert strawberry, F. ananassa, is a valuable horticultural crop for which genomic information, until recently, had been somewhat limited to transcriptome analysis of fruit quality and ripening, response to pathogens, and regulation of the flowering response and runner production. Of the four diploid strawberry subgenomes contributing to the F. ananassa octoploid genome, the woodland strawberry, F. vesca, appears to be dominant. EMS mutagenesis of an inbred line of F. vesca resulted in eight M2 lines that did not produce any strawberries, or very few achenes, over a three year period, and these lines were named fruitless1-8. Further characterization revealed that 6 of the fruitless lines failed to produce fruit because their anthers failed to develop properly or their pollen was abnormal. A brief characterization of these lines is presented here to make the lines available to the research community.