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Blueberry (Vaccinium spp.) is one of the most economically important berry crops worldwide. Validation of genetic mapping studies is often hindered by asynchronous marker technology. The development of a standardized genotyping platform that targets a specific set of polymorphic loci can be a practical solution to unify the scientific and breeding community toward blueberry improvement. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a targeted genotyping platform for cultivated blueberries that is affordable, reproducible, and sufficiently high density to warrant large-scale adoption for genomic studies. The Flex-Seq platform was developed in a two-step procedure that resulted in 22,000 loci that yielded 194,365 single nucleotide polymorphisms when assessed in a diversity set of 192 samples including cultivated and other related wild Vaccinium species. Locus recovery averaged 89.4% in the cultivated polyploid blueberry (northern highbush [NHB], southern highbush [SHB], and rabbiteye [RE]) and on average 88.8% were polymorphic. While recovery of these loci was lower in the other Vacciniumspecies assayed, recovery remained high and ranged between 60.8% and 70.4% depending on the taxonomic distance to the cultivated blueberry targeted in this platform. NHB had the highest mean number of variants per locus at 9.7, followed by RE with 9.1, SHB with 8.5, and a range between 7.7 and 8.5 in other species. As expected, the total number of unique-instate haplotypes exceeded the total number of variants in the domesticated blueberries. Phylogenetic analysis using a subset of the SNPs and haplotypes mostly conformed to known relationships. The platform also offers flexibility about the number of loci, depth of sequencing for accurate dosage calling, loci and haplotype reconstruction from increased fragment length. This genotyping platform will accelerate the development and improvement of blueberry cultivars through genomic-assisted breeding tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hop production utilizes exclusively female plants, whereas male plants only serve to generate novel variation within breeding programs through crossing. Currently, hop lacks a rapid and accurate diagnostic marker to determine whether plants are male or female. Without a diagnostic marker, breeding programs may take 1–2 years to determine the sex of new seedlings. Previous research on sex-linked markers was restricted to specific populations or breeding programs and therefore had limited transferability or suffered from low scalability. A large collection of 765 hop genotypes with known sex phenotypes, genotyping-by-sequencing, and genome-wide association mapping revealed a highly significant marker on the sex chromosome (LOD score = 208.7) that predicted sex within our population with 96.2% accuracy. In this study, we developed a PCR allele competitive extension (PACE) assay for the diagnostic SNP and tested three quick DNA extraction methodologies for rapid, high-throughput genotyping. Additionally, the marker was validated in a separate population of 94 individuals from 15 families from the USDA-ARS hop breeding program in Prosser, WA with 96% accuracy. This diagnostic marker is located in a gene predicted to encode the basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor protein, a family of proteins that have been previously implicated in male sterility in a variety of plant species, which may indicate a role in determining hop sex. The marker is diagnostic, accurate, affordable, and highly scalable and has the potential to improve efficiency in hop breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Red raspberry is an economically important horticultural crop that is known for its fruit's sweet flavour and nutritional value. A reliable and economic genotyping platform is needed to facilitate clonal/variety identification. Previous attempts for clonal identification utilized morphological traits or low‐throughput, difficult to score dinucleotide‐containing simple sequence repeat molecular markers. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), despite having lower allelic diversity, are numerous across the genome and more easily converted to high‐throughput assays restoring differential power. In this study, we use the kompetitive allele‐specific PCR (KASP™) chemistry, an affordable and high‐throughput platform, to develop a panel of SNPs to distinguish a diverse collection of red raspberry accessions for clonal identification. The panel consists of 48 KASP assays that show high concordance with whole genome sequencing, allelic balance, and recovery rate and a minimal set of 24 assays that distinguished the same accessions differentiated by the larger panel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TPX2 proteins were first identified in vertebrates as a key mitotic spindle assembly factor. Subsequent studies demonstrated that TPX2 is an intricate protein, with functionally and structurally distinct domains and motifs including Aurora kinase-binding, importin-binding, central microtubule-binding, and C-terminal TPX2 conserved domain, among others. The first plant TPX2-like protein, WAVE-DAMPENED2, was identified in Arabidopsis as a dominant mutation responsible for reducing the waviness of roots grown on slanted agar plates. Each plant genome encodes at least one 'canonical' protein with all TPX2 domains and a family of proteins (20 in Arabidopsis) that diversified to contain only some of the domains. Although all plant TPX2-family proteins to date bind microtubules, they function in distinct processes such as cell division, regulation of hypocotyl cell elongation by hormones and light signals, vascular development, or abiotic stress tolerance. Consequently, their expression patterns, regulation, and functions have diverged considerably. Here we summarize the current body of knowledge surrounding plant TPX2-family proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Pyrenophora teres f. teres and P. teres f. maculata are significant pathogens that cause net blotch of barley. An increased number of loci involved in P. teres resistance or susceptibility responses of barley as well as interacting P. teres virulence effector loci have recently been identified through biparental and association mapping studies of both the pathogen and host. Characterization of the resistance/susceptibility loci in the host and the interacting effector loci in the pathogen will provide a path for targeted gene validation for better‐informed release of resistant barley cultivars. This review assembles concise consensus maps for all loci published for both the host and pathogen, providing a useful resource for the community to be used in pathogen characterization and barley breeding for resistance to both forms of P. teres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]