Abstract:
Background Focusing on key indicators of drought resistance is highly important for quickly mining candidate genes related to drought resistance in cotton.
Results In the present study, drought resistance was identifed in drought resistance-related RIL populations during the fowering and boll stages, and multiple traits were evaluated; these traits included three key indicators: plant height (PH), single boll weight (SBW) and transpiration rate (Tr). Based on these three key indicators, three groups of extreme mixing pools were constructed for BSA-seq. Based on the mapping interval of each trait, a total of 6.27 Mb QTL intervals were selected on chromosomes A13 (3.2 Mb), A10 (2.45 Mb) and A07 (0.62 Mb) as the focus of this study. Based on the annotation information and qRT‒PCR analysis, three key genes that may be involved in the drought stress response of cotton were screened: GhF6’H1, Gh3AT1 and GhPER55. qRT‒PCR analysis of parental and extreme germplasm materials revealed that the expression of these genes changed signifcantly under drought stress. Cotton VIGS experiments verifed the important impact of key genes on cotton drought resistance.
Conclusions This study focused on the key indicators of drought resistance, laying the foundation for the rapid mining of drought-resistant candidat genes in cotton and providing genetic resources for directed molecular breeding of drought resistance in cotton
Keywords: G. hirsutum, Drought resistance indicators, BSA-seq, Functional verifcation
