Use of molecular markers to define the environmental condition to select accession of pea

ESPÓSITO, M.A; MILANESI, L.; MARTIN, E.A.; CRAVERO, V.P.; LOPEZ ANIDO, F.S.; COINTRY, E.L.

Viña del Mar - Valparaíso (Chile)

Congreso; VI Encuentro Latinoamericano y del Caribe de Biotecnología Agropecuaria; 2007

REDBIO

Pea (Pisum sativum L.), a native specie of Southwest Asia, was among the first crops cultivated by mano Wild field pea can stíll be found in AIghanistan, Iran and Ethiopia. It´s the second most important food legume worldwide after common bean. The increasing demand for protein-rich raw materials for animal feed or intermediary products far human nutrition have led to a greater interest in this crop as a protein source. Genotypes by year interactions reduce the association between phenotypic and genotypic values. Genotype x environment interactions is almost unanimously considered to be among the major factors limiting response to selection and the efficiency of breeding programs. The objectives of this study were estimate the heritability via variance components and genotype x year interactions for different traits determining the consensus between morphological and molecular data in two environmental conditions. Forty accessions of pea were evaluated during 2005 and 2006 in different environmental conditions: stresslul and non-stresslul situations. Morphologic, productive and SRAP data were collected. The phenotypic and the genotypic variances were determined and the heritability in broad sense was estimated. The same data were analyzed for each single environment. A total of 162 polymorphic SRAP´s bands were scored using seven combinations of primers. A comparison belween morphological and molecular data was carried out through a Procrustes Generalized Method. The correlation between SRAP and morphological data was r=0.55 lar 2005 and r=0.72 for 2006 showing the highest correspondence between both data set for unfavourable environmental condition. These results suggest that exposure to combinations of environmental stresses may increase the expression of genetic variability lar productive traits. This pattern is different from the one often seen lar morphological traits, which either shows little change in heritability or a change largely due to effects on environmental variance. If the expression of genetic variance is increased by the stresslul conditions, the response to selection will be greater under some combinations of extreme conditions.