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Dryad

Data from: Hallauer's Tusón: a decade of selection for tropical- to-temperate phenological adaptation in maize

Cite this dataset

Teixeira, Juliana E. C. et al. (2014). Data from: Hallauer's Tusón: a decade of selection for tropical- to-temperate phenological adaptation in maize [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8f64f

Abstract

Crop species exhibit an astounding capacity for environmental adaptation, but genetic bottlenecks resulting from intense selection for adaptation and productivity can lead to a genetically vulnerable crop. Improving the genetic resiliency of temperate maize depends upon the use of tropical germplasm, which harbors a rich source of natural allelic diversity. Here, the adaptation process was studied in a tropical maize population subjected to 10 recurrent generations of directional selection for early flowering in a single temperate environment in Iowa, USA. We evaluated the response to this selection across a geographical range spanning from 43.05° (WI) to 18.00° (PR) latitude. The capacity for an all-tropical maize population to become adapted to a temperate environment was revealed in a marked fashion: on average, families from generation 10 flowered 20 days earlier than families in generation 0, with a nine-day separation between the latest generation 10 family and the earliest generation 0 family. Results suggest that adaptation was primarily due to selection on genetic main effects tailored to temperature-dependent plasticity in flowering time. Genotype-by-environment interactions represented a relatively small component of the phenotypic variation in flowering time, but were sufficient to produce a signature of localized adaptation that radiated latitudinally, in partial association with daylength and temperature, from the original location of selection. Furthermore, the original population exhibited a maladaptive syndrome including excessive ear and plant heights along with later flowering; this was reduced in frequency by selection for flowering time.

Usage notes

Location

43.05/-89.53
25.50/-80.50
39.67/-75.75
35.67/-78.49
38.89/-92.20
33.60/-101.91
30.55/-96.43
18.00/-66.51
42.03/-93.77