Browsing by Subject "Chenopodium quinoa"

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Characterization of epidermal bladder cells in Chenopodium quinoa
(2021) Otterbach, Sophie L.; Khoury, Holly; Rupasinghe, Thusitha; Mendis, Himasha; Kwan, Kim H.; Lui, Veronica; Natera, Siria H. A.; Klaiber, Iris; Allen, Nathaniel M.; Jarvis, David E.; Tester, Mark; Roessner, Ute; Schmöckel, Sandra M.
Chenopodium quinoa (quinoa) is considered a superfood with its favourable nutrient composition and being gluten free. Quinoa has high tolerance to abiotic stresses, such as salinity, water deficit (drought) and cold. The tolerance mechanisms are yet to be elucidated. Quinoa has epidermal bladder cells (EBCs) that densely cover the shoot surface, particularly the younger parts of the plant. Here, we report on the EBC's primary and secondary metabolomes, as well as the lipidome in control conditions and in response to abiotic stresses. EBCs were isolated from plants after cold, heat, high‐light, water deficit and salt treatments. We used untargeted gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) to analyse metabolites and untargeted and targeted liquid chromatography‐MS (LC–MS) for lipids and secondary metabolite analyses. We identified 64 primary metabolites, including sugars, organic acids and amino acids, 19 secondary metabolites, including phenolic compounds, betanin and saponins and 240 lipids categorized in five groups including glycerolipids and phospholipids. We found only few changes in the metabolic composition of EBCs in response to abiotic stresses; these were metabolites related with heat, cold and high‐light treatments but not salt stress. Na+ concentrations were low in EBCs with all treatments and approximately two orders of magnitude lower than K+ concentrations.
Genetic variation for tolerance to the downy mildew pathogen Peronospora variabilis in genetic resources of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa)
(2021) Colque-Little, Carla; Abondano, Miguel Correa; Lund, Ole Søgaard; Amby, Daniel Buchvaldt; Piepho, Hans-Peter; Andreasen, Christian; Schmöckel, Sandra; Schmid, Karl
Background: Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is an ancient grain crop that is tolerant to abiotic stress and has favorable nutritional properties. Downy mildew is the main disease of quinoa and is caused by infections of the biotrophic oomycete Peronospora variabilis Gaüm. Since the disease causes major yield losses, identifying sources of downy mildew tolerance in genetic resources and understanding its genetic basis are important goals in quinoa breeding. Results: We infected 132 South American genotypes, three Danish cultivars and the weedy relative C. album with a single isolate of P. variabilis under greenhouse conditions and observed a large variation in disease traits like severity of infection, which ranged from 5 to 83%. Linear mixed models revealed a significant effect of genotypes on disease traits with high heritabilities (0.72 to 0.81). Factors like altitude at site of origin or seed saponin content did not correlate with mildew tolerance, but stomatal width was weakly correlated with severity of infection. Despite the strong genotypic effects on mildew tolerance, genome-wide association mapping with 88 genotypes failed to identify significant marker-trait associations indicating a polygenic architecture of mildew tolerance. Conclusions: The strong genetic effects on mildew tolerance allow to identify genetic resources, which are valuable sources of resistance in future quinoa breeding.