Working group session:
Structural Genomics
Presentation type:
poster
Authors:
Rahman, Mehboob-ur-; Rahman, Mehboob-ur-; Ali, Ahmed ; Qaiser Khan, Ali; Abbas, Ammad ; Rahmat, Zainab ; Sarfraz, Zareen ; Khalid, Anum ; Rasheed, Farah; Munir, Atif ; Atif Iqbal, Muhammad; Scheffler, Jodi; Scheffler, Brain
Presenter:
Rahman, Mehboob-ur-
Correspondent:
Rahman, Mehboob-ur-
Abstract:
Cotton leaf curl disease—transmitted by whitefly (Bemisia tabaci), was first reported in 1912 in Nigeria, and later spread to Egypt, Sudan, India and Pakistan, and recently in China. The disease has significantly challenged the sustainability of cotton production in Pakistan with annual yield penalty of two million bales. Efforts were made in developing resistant cotton varieties, which upheld the resistance for couple of years but overcame by the evolution of new strain of the virus (now called as cotton leaf curl Burewala virus). For protecting the most important natural fiber producing crop, a mega project aiming at the improvement of genetics of the cotton plant for combating the disease, was initiated in 2011 under Pak-US (managed through ICARDA, Pakistan) joint venture program. Till now, more than 3500 cotton accessions have been screened; and 33 accessions were found asymptomatic while NIBGE-2472-3 and PGMB-3661 showed high tolerance to the disease. Among the asymptomatic, Mac-07 (photoperiod insensitive) is being used extensively by multiple cotton research institutes for developing resistant cotton cultivars. We too developed mapping populations, and surveyed 2400 SSRs on a highly tolerant genotype G. hirsutum 2472-3 and a highly sensitive genotype G. barbadense PGMB-33. Out of these, 113 were found polymorphic and further subjected to genotyping of F2 population. Based on our limited studies, we were able to identify two QTLs i.e. QCLCuD25 and QCLCuD26 associated with resistance to the disease. These studies will pave the way for not only initiating marker-assisted breeding for the development of resistant cotton cultivars in Pakistan but will also provide a comprehensive information to the international cotton community for combating the disease.