Addition of individual chromosomes of maize inbreds B73 and Mo17 to oat cultivars Starter and Sun II: maize chromosome retention, transmission, and plant phenotype.

Oat-maize addition (OMA) lines with one, or occasionally more, chromosomes of maize (Zea mays L., 2n = 2x = 20) added to an oat (Avena sativa L., 2n = 6x = 42) genomic background can be produced via embryo rescue from sexual crosses of oat x maize. Self-fertile disomic addition lines of different oat genotypes, mainly cultivar Starter, as recipient for maize chromosomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, and the short arm of 10 and a monosomic addition line for chromosome 8, have been reported previously in which the sweet corn hybrid Seneca 60 served as the maize chromosome donor. Here we report the production and characterization of a series of new OMA lines with inbreds B73 and Mo17 as maize chromosome donors and with oat cultivars Starter and Sun II as maize chromosome recipients. Fertile disomic OMA lines were recovered for B73 chromosomes 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 and Mo17 chromosomes 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10. These lines together with non-fertile (oat x maize) F(1) plants with chromosome 3 and chromosome 7 of Mo17 individually added to Starter oat provide DNA of additions to oat of all ten individual maize chromosomes between the two maize inbreds. The Mo17 chromosome 10 OMA line was the first fertile disomic OMA line obtained carrying a complete chromosome 10. The B73 OMA line for chromosome 1 and the B73 and Mo17 OMA lines for chromosome 8 represent disomic OMA lines with improved fertility and transmission of the addition chromosome compared to earlier Seneca 60 versions. Comparisons among the four oat-maize parental genotype combinations revealed varying parental effects and interactions on frequencies of embryo recovery, embryo germination, F(1) plantlets with maize chromosomes, the specific maize chromosomes retained and transmitted to F(2) progeny, and phenotypes of self-fertile disomic addition plants. As opposed to the previous use of a hybrid Seneca 60 maize stock as donor of the added maize chromosomes, the recovered B73 and Mo17 OMA lines provide predictable genotypes for use as tools in physical mapping of maize DNA sequences, including inter-genic sequences, by simple presence/absence assays. The recovered OMA lines represent unique materials for maize genome analysis, genetic, physiological, and morphological studies, and a possible means to transfer maize traits to oat. Descriptions of these materials can be found at http://agronomy.cfans.umn.edu/Maize_Genomics.html .