Apomictic Malus plants exhibit abnormal pollen development

Frontiers in Plant Science

Plant Science

Xuan-Yu Yang¹  Chang-Hui Zhao¹  Shao-Hua Li¹  Dan-Dan Liu¹  Xian-Song Tong²  Da-Ru Wang³  Chun-Xiang You³  Rui-Fen Zhang⁴  Guang-Li Sha⁴  Hong-Juan Ge⁴ 

[1] College of Agriculture, Yunnan University, Kunming, Yunnan, China;Fu-ning Popularizing Agricultural Techniques Center, Fu-ning, Yunnan, China;National Key Laboratory of Crop Biology, National Research Center for Apple Engineering and Technology, College of Horticulture Science and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai-An, Shandong, China;Qingdao Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Qingdao, Shandong, China;

关键词: apple;    apomixis;    transcriptome analysis;    pollen abortion;    apomeiosis;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpls.2023.1065032

 received in 2022-10-09, accepted in 2023-01-30,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Apomixis is the asexual reproduction through seeds that leads to the production of genetically uniform progeny. It has become an important tool in plant breeding because it facilitates the retention of genotypes with desirable traits and allows seeds to be obtained directly from mother plants. Apomixis is rare in most economically important crops, but it occurs in some Malus species. Here, the apomictic characteristics of Malus were examined using four apomictic and two sexually reproducing Malus plants. Results from transcriptome analysis showed that plant hormone signal transduction was the main factor affecting apomictic reproductive development. Four of the apomictic Malus plants examined were triploid, and pollen was either absent or present in very low densities in the stamen. Variation in the presence of pollen was associated with variation in the apomictic percentage; specifically, pollen was absent in the stamens of tea crabapple plants with the highest apomictic percentage. Furthermore, pollen mother cells failed to progress normally into meiosis and pollen mitosis, a trait mostly observed in apomictic Malus plants. The expression levels of meiosis-related genes were upregulated in apomictic plants. Our findings indicate that our simple method of detecting pollen abortion could be used to identify apple plants that are capable of apomictic reproduction.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Liu, Wang, Yang, Zhao, Li, Sha, Zhang, Ge, Tong and You