Publications by authors named "Ursula Frei"

Restoration of haploid female and haploid male fertility without colchicine is feasible. Three SNPs and eight gene models for HFF, and one SNP and a gene model for HMF were identified. Doubled haploid (DH) breeding accelerates the development of elite inbred lines and facilitates the incorporation of exotic germplasm, offering a powerful tool for maize improvement.

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Article Synopsis
  • Doubled haploid (DH) technology quickly produces completely homozygous plants from heterozygous maize in just two generations, making it a popular choice for breeding programs.
  • This method relies on specific maize lines that induce haploid seeds when used as pollen, with in vivo maternal haploid induction being the most common technique for producing haploid plants.
  • The process includes pollination with a haploid inducer, screening and germinating haploids, using a doubling agent to boost genome duplication, and several rounds of self-pollination to achieve sufficient yields of homozygous inbred lines.
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Maize is used for multiple purposes, including food, feed, and energy production, and since transitioning to hybrid cultivars at around 1930, maize yield has significantly increased. This is largely due to hybrid vigor, which refers to the superior performance of the progeny from two unrelated inbred parents. Consequently, nearly all maize cultivars grown in the United States are hybrids.

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Parental combinations determined by genomic estimated usefulness and parental contributions of the lines in bridging population can enhance the genetic gain of traits of interest in maternal haploid inducer breeding. Parent selection in crosses aligns well with the quantitative trait performance in the progenies. We herein take advantage of estimated genetic values (EGV) and usefulness criteria (UC) of bi-parental combinations by genomic prediction (GP) to compare the empirical performance of doubled haploid inducer (DHI) progenies of eight elite inducers crosses in a half-diallel.

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Doubled haploid (DH) line production through maternal haploid induction is widely adopted in maize breeding programs. The established protocol for DH production includes four steps namely maternal haploid induction, haploid identification, genome doubling of haploid, and self-fertilization of doubled haploids. Since modern haploid inducers still produce relatively small portion of haploids among undesirable hybrid kernels, haploid identification is typically laborious, costly, and time-consuming, making this step the second foremost in the DH technique.

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A large-effect QTL was fine mapped, which revealed 79 gene models, with 10 promising candidate genes, along with a novel inversion. In commercial maize breeding, doubled haploid (DH) technology is arguably the most efficient resource for rapidly developing novel, completely homozygous lines. However, the DH strategy, using in vivo haploid induction, currently requires the use of mutagenic agents which can be not only hazardous, but laborious.

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Haploid inducers are key components of doubled haploid (DH) technology in maize. Robust agronomic performance and better haploid induction ability of inducers are persistently sought through genetic improvement. We herein developed inducers enabling large-scale haploid induction of inducers and discovered superior inducers from the DH progenies.

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Selection in the Iowa Stiff Stalk Synthetic (BSSS) maize population for high yield, grain moisture, and root and stalk lodging has indirectly modified plant architecture traits that are important for adaptation to high plant density. In this study, we developed doubled haploid (DH) lines from the BSSS maize population in the earliest cycle of recurrent selection (BSSS), cycle 17 of reciprocal recurrent selection, [BSSS(R)17] and the cross between the two cycles [BSSS/BSSS(R)C17]. We aimed to determine the phenotypic variation and changes in agronomic traits that have occurred through the recurrent selection program in this population and to identify genes or regions in the genome associated with the plant architecture changes observed in the different cycles of selection.

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Article Synopsis
  • In maize, doubled haploid (DH) lines are produced using maternal haploid inducers, with the haploid induction rate (HIR) being influenced by multiple genes.* ! -
  • A genome-wide association study of 159 haploid inducers revealed a major gene linked to HIR and identified a significant quantitative trait locus (QTL) on chromosome 10 associated with an ortholog involved in haploid induction.* ! -
  • Several smaller effect QTLs across maize chromosomes were also discovered, highlighting the trait's polygenic nature and suggesting potential for improving HIR through marker-assisted selection in breeding programs.* !
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Article Synopsis
  • Molecular characterization of maize germplasm helps improve breeding by analyzing genetic diversity and selecting parental lines for better traits.
  • The study utilizes SNP markers to assess genetic variability in doubled haploid (DH) lines from different cycles of the Iowa Stiff Stalk Synthetic maize population, particularly focusing on potential losses of diversity from the original population (C0) to a later cycle (C17).
  • Results show significant genetic differentiation between the original (C0) and more selected lines (C17) due to recurrent selection, with evidence of changes in favorable allele frequencies that may impact future breeding efforts.
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Introduction: Computer vision and deep learning (DL) techniques have succeeded in a wide range of diverse fields. Recently, these techniques have been successfully deployed in plant science applications to address food security, productivity, and environmental sustainability problems for a growing global population. However, training these DL models often necessitates the large-scale manual annotation of data which frequently becomes a tedious and time-and-resource- intensive process.

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The effectiveness of haploid induction systems is regarded not only for high haploid induction rate (HIR) but also resource savings. Isolation fields are proposed for hybrid induction. However, efficient haploid production depends on inducer traits such as high HIR, abundant pollen production, and tall plants.

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Doubled haploid technology is a feasible, fast, and cost-efficient way of producing completely homozygous lines in maize. Many factors contribute to the success of this system including the haploid induction rate (HIR) of inducer lines, the inducibility of donor background, and environmental conditions. Sixteen inducer lines were tested on eight different genetic backgrounds of five categories in different environments for the HIR to determine possible interaction specificity.

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Doubled haploid (DH) technology reduces the time required to obtain homozygous genotypes and accelerates plant breeding among other advantages. It is established in major crop species such as wheat, barley, maize, and canola. DH lines can be produced by both in vitro and in vivo methods and the latter is focused here.

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Doubled haploid (DH) technology in maize takes advantage of in vivo haploid induction (HI) triggered by pollination of donors of interest with inducer genotypes. However, the ability of different donors to be induced-inducibility (IND), varies among germplasm and the underlying molecular mechanisms are still unclear. In this study, the phenotypic variation for IND in a mapping population of temperate inbred lines was evaluated to identify regions in the maize genome associated with IND.

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Spontaneous haploid genome doubling is not associated with undesirable linkage drag effects. The presence of spontaneous doubling genes allows maximum exploitation of variability from the temperate-adapted BS39 population Tropical non-elite maize (Zea mays L.) germplasm, such as BS39, provides a unique opportunity for broadening the genetic base of U.

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A major locus for spontaneous haploid genome doubling was detected by a case-control GWAS in an exotic maize germplasm. The combination of double haploid breeding method with this locus leads to segregation distortion on genomic regions of chromosome five. Temperate maize (Zea mays L.

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Genomic prediction (GP) might be an efficient way to improve haploid induction rate (HIR) and to reduce the laborious and time-consuming task of phenotypic selection for HIR in maize (Zea mays L.). In this study, we evaluated GP accuracies for HIR and other agronomic traits of importance to inducers by independent and cross-validation.

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Doubled haploid technology is highly successful in maize breeding programs and is contingent on the ability of maize inducers to efficiently produce haploids. Knowledge of the genes involved in haploid induction is important for not only developing better maize inducers, but also to create inducers in other crops. The main quantitative trait loci involved in maize haploid induction are and .

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Maize doubled haploid (DH) lines are usually created in vivo, through crosses with maternal haploid inducers. These inducers have the inherent ability of generating seeds with haploid embryos when used to pollinate other genotypes. The resulting haploid plants are treated with a doubling agent and self-pollinated, producing completely homozygous seeds.

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A major QTL for SHGD was identified on chromosome 5 with stable expression across environments. The introgression this QTL can overcome the need of colchicine in DH lines development. Genome doubling of haploids is one of the major constraints of large-scale doubled haploid (DH) technology.

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Doubled haploid (DH) technology has changed the maize-breeding landscape in recent years. Traditionally, DH production requires the use of chemical doubling agents to induce haploid genome doubling and, subsequently, male fertility. These chemicals can be harmful to humans and the plants themselves, and typically result in a doubling rate of 10%-30%.

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In vivo doubled haploid (DH) technology is widely used in commercial maize (Zea mays L.) breeding. Haploid genome doubling is a critical step in DH breeding.

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A self-fertility locus was fine mapped to a 1.6 cM region on linkage group 5 in a perennial ryegrass population. This locus was the main determinant of pollen self-compatibility.

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