Plant Genome II Conference
Town & Country Conference Center, San Diego, CA, January, 1994.
PG-II: QUANTITATIVE TRAIT LOCI (QTL) MARKERS ASSOCIATED WITH RUMINANT
DIGESTION OF BARLEY (HORDEUM VULGARE L.)
QUANTITATIVE TRAIT LOCI (QTL) MARKERS ASSOCIATED WITH RUMINANT
DIGESTION OF BARLEY (HORDEUM VULGARE L.).
Laura E. Oberthur, Janice Bowman, and Tom Blake. Dept. of Plant &
Soil Sci. and Dept. of Animal Sci., Montana State Univ., Bozeman,
MT 59717.
Although most barley grown world-wide is for animal feed,
few barleys have been evaluated for livestock utilization.
Little is known about specific factors in relation to ruminant
feed utilization, thus selection for superior feed quality
barleys has not been possible. The high cost involved with
animal performance evaluations of barley encourages alternative
methods, such as the identification of barley molecular markers
associated with animal utilization of grain. The goal of this
project is to develop criteria to relate barley genetic markers,
as established by the North American Barley Genome Mapping
Project, to ruminal dry matter digestion (DMD) and ruminal
protein and starch digestion. QTL markers associated with DMD
have been identified on the short arm of chromosome 2, near the
RbcS gene and on the long arm of chromosome 4, near the isozyme
marker iAco2 and RFLP marker ABG500B. The chromosome 4 region
also contains gene(s) responsible for some of the variation in
soluble (wort) protein. This data in combination with the
positive correlation with soluble and ratio of soluble protein to
total proteins, suggests that specific proteins may be critical
in determining the ability of ruminal microbes to effectively
digest barley grain for animal utilization.
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