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152946 - Genetic variation in flowering traits of Tasmanian Leptospermum scoparium and association with provenance home site climatic factors.pdf (2.99 MB)

Genetic variation in flowering traits of Tasmanian Leptospermum scoparium and association with provenance home site climatic factors

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-21, 13:10 authored by Wellington, CN, Rene VaillancourtRene Vaillancourt, Bradley PottsBradley Potts, Worledge, D, Oa grady, AP
Leptospermum scoparium is emerging as an economically important plant for the commercial production of mānuka honey and essential oils, both exhibiting unique antibacterial attributes. To support its domestication this is the first quantitative genetic study of variation for L. scoparium traits. It utilised plants from 200 open-pollinated families derived from 40 native populations, from across the species range in Tasmania, grown in a common garden field trial. The traits studied were survival, growth, and the flowering traits precocity, the timing of seasonal peak flowering, flowering duration, and flowering intensity. Significant genetic variation was evident at the population level for all traits studied and at the family level for three traits - growth, flowering precocity, and time to peak flowering. These three traits had moderate to high narrow-sense heritability estimates ranging from 0.27 to 0.69. For six of the traits studied, population differences were associated with climate attributes at the locations where seed was collected, suggesting adaptation to the local climate may have contributed to the observed population differentiation. Population level geographical trends suggest that genotypes to focus on for domestication originate from the eastern half of Tasmania for precociousness and the western half of Tasmania for earlier time to peak flowering and extended flowering duration.

Funding

Cooperative Research Centre for Honey Bee Products

History

Publication title

Plants

Volume

11

Issue

8

Article number

1029

Number

1029

Pagination

1-19

ISSN

2223-7747

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

MDPI

Place of publication

Switzerland

Rights statement

Copyright 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Horticultural crops not elsewhere classified