Detection and Molecular Characterization of Two FAD3 Genes Controlling Linolenic Acid Content and Development of Allele-Specific Markers in Yellow Mustard (Sinapis alba)

Development of yellow mustard (Sinapis alba L.) with superior quality traits (low erucic and linolenic acid contents, and low glucosinolate content) can make this species as a potential oilseed crop. We have recently isolated three inbred lines Y1127, Y514 and Y1035 with low (3.8%), medium (12.3%) and high (20.8%) linolenic acid (C18∶3) content, respectively, in this species. Inheritance studies detected two fatty acid desaturase 3 (FAD3) gene loci controlling the variation of C18∶3 content. QTL mapping revealed that the two FAD3 gene loci responsible for 73.0% and 23.4% of the total variation and were located on the linkage groups Sal02 and Sal10, respectively. The FAD3 gene on Sal02 was referred to as SalFAD3.LA1 and that on Sal10 as SalFAD3.LA2. The dominant and recessive alleles were designated as LA¹ and la¹ for SalFAD3.LA1, and LA² and la² for SalFAD3.LA2. Cloning and alignment of the coding and genomic DNA sequences revealed that the SalFAD3.LA1 and SalFAD3.LA2 genes each contained 8 exons and 7 introns. LA¹ had a coding DNA sequence (CDS) of 1143 bp encoding a polypeptide of 380 amino acids, whereas la¹ was a loss-of-function allele due to an insertion of 584 bp in exon 3. Both LA² and la² had a CDS of 1152 bp encoding a polypeptide of 383 amino acids. Allele-specific markers for LA¹, la¹, LA² and la² co-segregated with the C18∶3 content in the F₂ populations and will be useful for improving fatty acid composition through marker assisted selection in yellow mustard breeding.