Heredity and gene mapping of a novel white stripe leafmutant in wheat

Spotted leaf (spl) mutant is a type of leaf lesion mimic mutants in plants. We obtained some lesion mimic mutants from ethyl methane sulfonate (EMS)-mutagenized wheat (Triticum aestivumL.) cultivar Guomai 301 (wild type, WT), and one of them was named as white stripe leaf(wsl) mutant because of the white stripes on its leaves. Here we report the heredity and gene mapping of this novel wheat mutant wsl. There are many small scattered white stripes on the leaves of wslthroughout its whole growth period. As the plants grew, the white stripes became more severe and the necrotic area expanded. The mutant wslgrew only weakly before the jointing stage and gradually recovered after jointing. The length and width of the flag leaf, spike number per plant and thousand-grain weight of wslwere significantly lower than those of the WT. Genetic analysis indicated that the trait of white stripe leaf was controlled by a recessive gene locus, named as wsl, which was mapped on the short arm of chromosome 6B by SSR marker assay. Four SSR markers in the F2population of wsl×CS were linked to wslin the order of Xgpw1079-Xwmc104-Xgwm508-wsl-Xgpw7651at 7.1, 5.2, 8.7, and 4.4 cM, respectively and three SSR markers in the F2population of wsl×Jimai 22 were linked to wslin the order of Xgwm508-Xwmc494-Xgwm518-wslat 3.5, 1.6 and 8.2 cM, respectively. In comparison to the reference genome sequence of Chinese Spring (CS), wslis located in a 91-Mb region from 88 Mb (Xgwm518) to 179 Mb (Xgpw7651) on chromosome 6BS. Mutant wslis a novel germplasm for studying the molecular mechanism of wheat leaf development.