Christopher Navarro¹ , Yang Yang¹ , Amita Mohan² , Nathan Grant² , Kulvinder S. Gill² , Devinder Sandhu¹

1. Department of Biology, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Steven Point, WI 54481, USA
2. Department of Crop & Soil Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA
Author    Correspondence author
Molecular Plant Breeding, 2014, Vol. 5, No. 8   doi: 10.5376/mpb.2014.05.0008
Received: 13 May, 2014    Accepted: 27 May, 2014    Published: 12 Jun., 2014

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Navarro et al., Microsatellites Based Genetic Linkage Map of the Rht3 Locus in Bread Wheat, Molecular Plant Breeding, 2014, Vol.5, No. 8 43-46 (doi: 10.5376/mpb.2014.05.0008)

The wheat reduced height genes (Rht) played an important role in “The Green Revolution” by reducing damage due to lodging and making wheat more responsive to fertilizer applications. The successful use of cultivars containing Rht-B1b and Rht-D1b around the world compelled the scientists to identify and generate height mutants through induced mutation in wheat. There are many Rht genes known in wheat, however genetic and molecular characterizations of many Rht genes are lacking. The Rht3 gene was originally found in the cultivar, Tom Thumb, and resulted in 46% reduction in plant height compared to the wild type allele, rht3. The objectives of our investigation were to identify SSR markers linked to Rht3 and to develop a genetic linkage map of the region containing the Rht3 gene. The Rht3 gene was located on chromosome 4B using bulked segregant analysis. Genetic linkage mapping using an F₂ population placed Rht3 between markers wmc125 and gwm149 with a genetic distance of 14.4 cM and 23.6 cM, respectively. Identification of SSR markers associated with Rht3 may help breeders to more efficiently screen for reduced height genes in breeding programs with diverse environmental conditions.

Wheat; Reduced height; Simple sequence repeat (SSR); Genetic linkage map; Rht3