Fine mapping and candidate gene analysis of dwarf gene Rht14 in durum wheat (Triticum durum)

Semi-dwarf and dwarf genes were widely used in wheat breeding for improving lodging resistant and increasing yield. Rht14 dwarf gene was identified and deployed in durum wheat, where it showed advantage on important agronomic potential. The reciprocal F2 populations derived of Castelporziano (CP) and Langdon (L) were used for mapping of Rht14, which was located in intervals 4.8 cM and 10.38 cM by KASP (Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR) markers, respectively, where corresponding to 312–454 Mbp on chromosome 6A, and finally, it was mapped to the genomic region of 402 ~ 408 Mbp in Durum Wheat Svevo RefSeq Rel. 1.0 (i.e., 405 ~ 411 Mbp in Chinese Spring RefSeq v.1.0) using recombinants by indel markers. The expression of TdGA2oxA9 was higher in dwarf line than tall lines and the bioactive GA1 was lower. No sequence difference was observed in the promoter and coding region of GA2oxA9 between the dwarf and tall parent, while obvious DNA methylation difference was found in its promoter. Two methylation-related genes with high confidence located in the candidate region and expressed differently between the tall and dwarf ones. This study proposed that Rht14 might regulate the expression of GA2oxA9 by DNA methylation in its promoter, which provided a way to clone Rht14 and to further investigate the mechanism behind.