Barley yellow mosaic disease is caused by two related viruses, Barley yellow mosaic virus (BaYMV) and Barley mild mosaic virus (BaMMV). The disease can heavily impact winter barley cropping, with 40-80% yield loss in 2-rowed barley in Japan (Usugi 1988), 50% losses in Europe (Plumb et al. 1986) up to complete yield loss, e.g. in some counties of the Yangtze River Valley (Chen 1993; Chen and Ruan 1992; Chen 2005). Both viruses belong to the genus Bymovirus in the family Potyviridae and are transmitted by the root-infecting plasmodiophorid Polymyxa graminis L.However, the two causal viruses differ in their temperature optima, serological properties, RNA sequences and their ability to infect different barley genotypes (Huth and Adams 1990; Habekuß et al. 2008). Use of resistant cultivars is the most economical and environmental-friendly way to control these soil-borne viruses (Kanyuka et al. 2003). So far, 22 resistance genes against barley yellow mosaic disease have been reported, of which most are recessive genes (see review of Jiang et al. 2020). However, many of these resistance genes are no longer effective. For example, the resistance gene rym4 is ineffective against BaYMV-2, which appeared in the late 1980s, the resistance gene rym5 was overcome by the strain BaMMV-Sil in France and BaMMV-Teik in Germany (Hariri et al. 2003; Vaianopoulos et al. 2007; Habekuß et al. 2008). It may therefore be expected that this trend will continue in the future, based on this, it is essential to identify and further characterize new sources of resistance and to develop diagnostic markers for marker-assisted selection (MAS) in barley.
About half of the known virus resistance genes in crops are recessive (Kang et al. 2005; Robaglia and Caranta 2006; Wang and Krishnaswamy 2012). Plant viruses need to recruit the host cells’ machinery to complete the infectious life cycle, thus mutation in the host factors genes may result in virus resistance (Garcia-Ruiz, 2018). Several of these recessive resistance genes are isoforms of Eukaryotic Translation Initiation Factor 4E (eIF4E), and eIF4G (Moffett 2009; Hashimoto et al. 2016). Up to now, two recessive resistance genes against BaMMV/BaYMV in barley have been isolated. The resistance to BaMMV/BaYMV impaeted by the rym4/5 locus is due to the host factor gene HvEIF4E (Kanyuka et al. 2005; Stein et al. 2005), while rym1/11 resistance is caused by sequence variations of the host factor gene Protein Disulfide Isomerase Like 5-1 (HvPDIL5-1) (Yang et al. 2014a). Out of twenty-two reported BaMMV/BaYMV resistance genes, six are allelic forms of HvEIF4E, i.e. rym4, rym5, rym6, rym10, eIF4EHOR4224, eIF4EHOR3298, while two (rym1 and rym11) are allelic forms of HvPDIL51 (Perovic et al. 2014; Yang et al. 2014a; Shi et al. 2019).
The Japanese barley landrace Chikurin Ibaraki 1 is susceptible to BaYMV in Japan (Ukai and Yamashita 1980). In contrast to this, Chikurin Ibaraki 1 was found to be resistant in response to three European strains, i.e. BaMMV, BaYMV-1 and BaYMV-2 (Götz and Friedt 1993; Lapierre and Signoret 2004). Werner et al. (2003) demonstrated that an uncharacterized recessive resistance locus on chromosome 5HS effective against BaYMV and BaYMV-2 originates from Chikurin Ibaraki 1, and segregates independently from the Carola-derived rym4 resistance that is effective against BaYMV and BaMMV. Further analysis of a doubled haploid (DH) mapping population derived from the cross of the Chikurin Ibaraki 1 and the susceptible winter barley cv. Plaisant located the recessive resistance gene effective against BaMMV on the short arm of chromosome 6H that was subsequently named rym15 (Le Gouis et al. 2004). However, the study showed that the order of flanking markers EBmac0874 and Bmag0173 is inverted compared to the genetic map of Lina × Hordeum spontaneum Canada park (Ramsay et al. 2000). To date this discrepancy in the marker order spanning the resistance locus has hindered further map-based cloning efforts for rym15.
During BaMMV/BaYMV testing in fields, there are many obstacles, e.g. an uneven distribution of the virus, simultaneous occurrence of two viruses (BaMMV and BaYMV), and similarity of the symptoms (Huth et al. 1984). In addition, only one cycle of winter barley resistance testing per year highlights the demand for a reliable and efficient testing method of soil-borne viruses of barley. Consequently, the mechanical inoculation method could overcome the variation in year-to-year scoring of the resistance reaction from the same genotype in the same field that is due to the above-mentioned variable environmental factors (Friedt 1983). Up to now, several mechanical inoculation methods for BaMMV were developed, e.g. based on soaked sponge rubbing (Friedt 1983), airbrush (Adams et al. 1986), finger rubbing (Kashiwazaki et al. 1989; Habekuß et al. 2008), spraygun (Ordon and Friedt 1993) or stick with gauze (SWG) methods (Jonson et al. 2006). Those studies suggested that the additives, inoculation stage, temperature and the inoculation techniques of the virus might influence the inoculation efficiency. While BaMMV is readily transmissible, the efficiency of BaYMV is much lower and is usually below 50% (So et al. 1997). Therefore, the knowledge of various degrees of mechanical inoculation efficiency should be taken in account for optimization of map based cloning projects.
In the past 25 years, molecular markers have been increasingly used in the genetic analysis of various traits and nowadays have become the basic tool for effective mapping of resistance genes in all crop plant species (Garrido-Cardenas et al. 2018; Perovic et al. 2019). Various codominant marker platforms have been used effectively to map resistance genes in crop plants. Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) markers or microsatellites are highly polymorphic and reproducible, however they are not amenable for high throughput even in case of modified capillary systems (Perovic et al. 2013a) nor as abundant as single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). Due to the property of abundance and high throughput, SNP markers have become the most amenable for gene mapping and breeding (Silvar et al 2011, Rasheed et al. 2017; Lu et al. 2020).
In case of barley, SNP arrays (Comadran et al. 2012; Bayer et al. 2017) provide the accurate physical marker position based on the most recent reference genome assembly data (Mascher et al. 2017, Monat et al. 2019). This feature greatly enhances the efficiency of breeding and genetic studies in barley (Perovic et al. 2020). Based on the published barley reference sequence (Mascher et al. 2017) and exome capture data (Russell et al. 2016), the 50K Illumina Infinium genotyping array was developed, featuring 49,267 SNP markers that were converted into 44,040 working assays (Bayer et al. 2017). Compared with the 9K Infinium iSelect array, which contained 7,842 markers (Comadran et al. 2012), the 50K Illumina Infinium array possesses around six times more markers, resulting in cheaper genotyping costs per sample.
The main objectives of the present study were to: construct two medium-resolution maps for the BaMMV resistance gene rym15, resolve the discrepancy in the order of flanking markers and develop robust high-throughput amenable flanking markers as a prerequisite for map based cloning of the resistance gene rym15.