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Rye (Secale cereale L.) is primarily grown as an annual winter crop throughout the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere. Due to its high resource use efficiency, rather low input requirements and high resistance to frost and drought, it has good potential to support more sustainable crop production in the face of future climate change and rising food demand. Process-based dynamic crop models are cutting-edge tools in current agronomic research by simulating crop growth, development, and yield under diverse soil, climate, and management conditions. They enable to evaluate the impacts of climate variability and management practices on agricultural production beyond limited field experiments. We choose to adapt the widely applied CSM CERES-wheat as a starting point for the rye model development, as rye is similar to wheat in terms of its morphological and physiological proper-ties. We created large agronomic trial datasets of cultivar-specific data (rye cv. Palazzo and wheat cv. Winnetou) using value for cultivation and use (VCU) trial data from the Federal Plant Variety Office and state variety trials of Saxony-Anhalt (SVT). The datasets cover all relevant wheat and rye-growing regions in Germany, allowing us to scale up model calibration. We added in-season data from an N-regime trial in Kiel, Northern Germany, from 2008 to 2010, and the Julius Kuehn Institute in Braunschweig, Central Germany, from 2009 to 2010. Weather data for each experimental site were retrieved from the German weather service's climate data center (DWD), and soil data were derived from the European Soil Database (ESDB) v2.0, both data in 1km² grid scale. The CERES-rye model showed satisfactory simulation accuracy regarding phenology, LAI, aboveground biomass, and tiller m-2 at harvest, unit grain weight, grain m-2 at harvest, and grain yield. Simulation-observation comparisons resulted in an RMSE of 3.3 days for emergence, 7.2 days for anthesis, and 7.3 days for harvest maturity date for the calibration dataset from the phenology part. From the growth and yield simulation, RMSE of 1.61 for LAI, 2468.7 kg ha-1 for biomass, 169.6 for tiller m-2, 7708.0 for grain m-2, 3.6 mg for unit grain weight, and 2182.7 kg ha-1 for grain yield. CERES-rye is available to conduct various CSM-based analysis including the evaluation of crop management strategies, consideration in analyzing crop rotations in DSSAT, and assessing rye's suitability for cultivation in different growing environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: The rye-derived dwarfing gene Ddw1 on chromosome 5R acts in triticale in considerably reducing plant height, increasing FHB severity and delaying heading stage. Abstract: Triticale, an amphiploid hybrid between durum wheat and rye, is an European cereal mainly grown in Germany, France, Poland, and Belarus for feeding purposes. Dwarfing genes might further improve the genetic potential of triticale concerning lodging resistance and yield. However, they might have pleiotropic effects on other, agronomically important traits including Fusarium head blight. Therefore, we analyzed a population of 199 doubled haploid (DH) lines of the cross HeTi117-06 × Pigmej for plant height, heading stage, and FHB severity across 2 locations and 2 years. The most prominent QTL was detected on chromosome 5R explaining 48, 77, and 71 % of genotypic variation for FHB severity, plant height, and heading stage, respectively. The frequency of recovery in cross validation was ≥90 % for all three traits. Because the markers that detect dwarfing gene Ddw1 in rye are also in our population the most closely linked markers, we assume that this major QTL resembles Ddw1. For FHB severity two, for plant height three, and for heading stage five additional QTL were detected. Caused by the considerable genetic variation for heading stage and FHB severity within the progeny with the dwarfing allele, short-strawed, early heading and FHB-resistant lines can be developed when population size is large enough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-zygotic reproductive isolation (RI) in plants is frequently based on the negative interaction of the parental genes involved in plant development. Of special interest is the study of such types of interactions in crop plants, because of the importance of distant hybridization in plant breeding. This study is devoted to map rye genes that are incompatible with wheat, determining the development of the shoot apical meristem in wheat–rye hybrids. Linkage analysis of microsatellite loci, as well as genes of embryo lethality (Eml-R1) and hybrid dwarfness (Hdw-R1) was carried out in hybrids of Chinese Spring wheat with recombinant inbred lines as well as interline rye hybrids. Eml-R1 and Hdw-R1 could be mapped proximal and distal of two closely linked EST-SSR markers, Xgrm902 and Xgrm959, on rye chromosome 6R. Both rye genes are located on a segment of chromosome 6R that contains a breakpoint of evolutionary translocation between the ancestral chromosomes of homeologous groups 6 and 3. The obtained results are discussed in relation to genes interacting in developmental pathways as a class of causal genes of RI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: During domestication and subsequent improvement plants were subjected to intensive positive selection for desirable traits. Identification of selection targets is important with respect to the future targeted broadening of diversity in breeding programmes. Rye (Secale cereale L.) is a cereal that is closely related to wheat, and it is an important crop in Central, Eastern and Northern Europe. The aim of the study was (i) to identify diverse groups of rye accessions based on high-density, genome-wide analysis of genetic diversity within a set of 478 rye accessions, covering a full spectrum of diversity within the genus, from wild accessions to inbred lines used in hybrid breeding, and (ii) to identify selective sweeps in the established groups of cultivated rye germplasm and putative candidate genes targeted by selection., Results: Population structure and genetic diversity analyses based on high-quality SNP (DArTseq) markers revealed the presence of three complexes in the Secale genus: S. sylvestre, S. strictum and S. cereale/vavilovii, a relatively narrow diversity of S. sylvestre, very high diversity of S. strictum, and signatures of strong positive selection in S. vavilovii. Within cultivated ryes we detected the presence of genetic clusters and the influence of improvement status on the clustering. Rye landraces represent a reservoir of variation for breeding, and especially a distinct group of landraces from Turkey should be of special interest as a source of untapped variation. Selective sweep detection in cultivated accessions identified 133 outlier positions within 13 sweep regions and 170 putative candidate genes related, among others, to response to various environmental stimuli (such as pathogens, drought, cold), plant fertility and reproduction (pollen sperm cell differentiation, pollen maturation, pollen tube growth), and plant growth and biomass production., Conclusions: Our study provides valuable information for efficient management of rye germplasm collections, which can help to ensure proper safeguarding of their genetic potential and provides numerous novel candidate genes targeted by selection in cultivated rye for further functional characterisation and allelic diversity studies., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The post-zygotic reproductive isolation (RI) in plants is frequently based on the negative interaction of the parental genes involved in plant development. Of special interest is the study of such types of interactions in crop plants, because of the importance of distant hybridization in plant breeding. This study is devoted to map rye genes that are incompatible with wheat, determining the development of the shoot apical meristem in wheat⁻rye hybrids. Linkage analysis of microsatellite loci, as well as genes of embryo lethality ( Eml-R1 ) and hybrid dwarfness ( Hdw-R1 ) was carried out in hybrids of Chinese Spring wheat with recombinant inbred lines as well as interline rye hybrids. Eml-R1 and Hdw-R1 could be mapped proximal and distal of two closely linked EST-SSR markers, Xgrm902 and Xgrm959 , on rye chromosome 6R. Both rye genes are located on a segment of chromosome 6R that contains a breakpoint of evolutionary translocation between the ancestral chromosomes of homeologous groups 6 and 3. The obtained results are discussed in relation to genes interacting in developmental pathways as a class of causal genes of RI.