Mapping crown rust resistance at multiple time points in elite oat germplasm

Crown rust, caused by Puccinia coronata f. sp. avenae Erikss., is the most important disease impacting cultivated oat (Avena sativa L.). Genetic resistance is the most desirable management strategy. The genetic architecture of crown rust resistance is not fully understood, and previous mapping investigations have mostly ignored temporal variation. A collection of elite oat lines sourced from oat breeding programs in the American Upper Midwest and Canada was genotyped using a high-density genotyping-by-sequencing system and evaluated for crown rust disease severity at multiple time points throughout the growing season in three disease nursery environments. Genome-wide association mapping was conducted for disease severity on each observation date of each trial, area under the disease progress curve for each trial, heading date for each trial, and area under the disease progress curve in a multi-environment model. Crown rust resistance quantitative trait loci (QTL) were detected on linkage groups Mrg05, Mrg12, Mrg15, Mrg18, Mrg20, and Mrg33. None of these QTL were coincident with a days-to-heading QTL detected on Mrg02. Only the QTL detected on Mrg15 was detected in multiple mapping models. The QTL on Mrg05, Mrg12, Mrg18, Mrg20, and Mrg33 were detected on only a single observation date and were not detected on observations just days before and after. This result uncovers the importance of temporal variation in mapping experiments which is usually ignored. It is possible that high density temporal data could be used to more precisely characterize the nature of plant resistance in other systems.