Male sterility has been widely used in hybrid seed production in Brassica, but not in B. rapa ssp. chinensis, and genetic models of male sterility for this subspecies are unclear. We discovered a spontaneous mutant in B. rapa ssp. chinensis. A series of progeny tests indicated that male sterility in B. rapa ssp. chinensis follows a three-allele model with BrMsa, BrMsb, and BrMsc. The male sterility locus has been mapped to chromosome A07 in BC1 and F2 populations through genotyping by sequencing. Fine mapping in a total of 1,590 F2 plants narrowed the male sterility gene BrMs to a 400 kb region, with two SNP markers only 0.3 cM from the gene. Comparative gene mapping shows that the Ms gene in B. rapa ssp. pekinensis is different from the BrMs gene of B. rapa ssp. chinensis, despite that both genes are located on chromosome A07. Interestingly, the DNA sequence orthologous to a male sterile gene in Brassica napus, BnRf, is within 400 kb of the BrMs locus. The BnRf orthologs of B. rapa ssp. chinensis were sequenced, and one KASP marker (BrMs_indel) was developed for genotyping based on a 14 bp indel at intron 4. Cosegregation of male sterility and BrMs_indel genotypes in the F2 population indicated that BnRf from B. napus and BrMs from B. rapa are likely to be orthologs. The BrMs_indel marker developed in this study will be useful in marker-assisted selection for the male sterility trait.
Correction for Chang et al., Construction of a male sterility system for hybrid rice breeding and seed production using a nuclear male sterility gene
