Department of Plant Sciences

Mobility and availability of cadmium (Cd) to crop plants pose risk to the food chain. Our objectives were to analyze variation for Cd concentration in leaves of a maize mapping population and to detect and determine the effects of quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with the Cd concentration. 290 F4 lines were phenotyped at two environments in Croatia and genotyped with 121 polymorphic SNP and SSR markers evenly distributed across the genome. The Cd accumulation in leaves of the population was significantly affected by the genotype and Cd concentration varied from 0.1 to 1.7 mg kg-1.One major quantitative trait locus affecting the accumulation was detected on chromosome 2 associated with the SSR marker bnlg1831. The locus explained 49.8% of the phenotypic variation. The LOD score for the QTL of 32.5 indicates very high probability that this QTL strongly affected amounts of Cd in leaves. Our findings could aid rapid development of maize genotypes with decreased/increased Cd accumulation in leaves by manipulation of the detected gene. Improved maize genotypes with effective ability to accumulate Cd can play an important role in treating Cd-contaminated soil.