AUTHOR=Das Abhijit K. , Gowda Munegowda M. , Muthusamy Vignesh , Zunjare Rajkumar U. , Chauhan Hema S. , Baveja Aanchal , Bhatt Vinay , Chand Gulab , Bhat Jayant S. , Guleria Satish K. , Saha Supradip , Gupta Hari S. , Hossain Firoz 

TITLE=Development of Maize Hybrids With Enhanced Vitamin-E, Vitamin-A, Lysine, and Tryptophan Through Molecular Breeding

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2021.659381

DOI=10.3389/fpls.2021.659381

ISSN=1664-462X

ABSTRACT=Malnutrition is a widespread problem which affects human health, society and economy. Traditional maize that serves as an important source of human nutrition, is deficient in vitamin-E, vitamin-A, lysine and tryptophan. Here, favourable alleles of vte4 (α-tocopherol methyl transferase), crtRB1 (β-carotene hydroxylase), lcyE (lycopene ε-cyclase) and o2 (opaque2) genes were combined in parental lines of four popular hybrids using marker-assisted selection. BC1F1, BC2F1 and BC2F2 populations were genotyped using gene-based markers of vte4, crtRB1, lcyE and o2. Background selection using 81-103 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) markers led to recovery of recurrent parent genome up to 95.45%. Alpha (α)-tocopherol was significantly enhanced among introgressed progenies (16.13 µg/g) as compared to original inbreds (7.90 µg/g). Provitamin-A (proA) (10.42 µg/g), lysine (0.352%) and tryptophan (0.086%) were also high in the introgressed progenies. The reconstituted hybrids showed 2-fold enhancement in α-tocopherol (16.83 µg/g) over original hybrids (8.06 µg/g). Improved hybrids also possessed high proA (11.48 µg/g), lysine (0.367%) and tryptophan (0.084%) when compared with traditional hybrids. The reconstituted hybrids recorded mean grain yield of 8066 kg/ha, which was at par with original hybrids (mean: 7846 kg/ha). The marker-assisted selection (MAS) -derived genotypes resembled their corresponding original hybrids for majority of agronomic and yield related traits, besides characters related to distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS). This is the first report of the development of maize with enhanced vitamin-E, vitamin-A, lysine and tryptophan.