Characterization of maize resistance to spider mite herbivores

We surveyed a diverse collection of maize (<i>Zea mays</i> subsp. <i>mays</i>) inbred lines for resistance to two spider mite herbivores, the generalist <i>Tetranychus urticae</i> (the two-spotted spider mite) and the grass-specialist <i>Oligonychus pratensis</i> (the Banks grass mite). We found that among more than 30 maize lines, only lines B49, B75, and B96 were highly resistant to <i>T. urticae</i>, and no lines were highly resistant to <i>O. pratensis</i>. Although our initial screen used single strains of both mite species, in a follow up experiment, we showed that B49, B75, and B96 are highly resistant to multiple, unrelated strains of the <i>T. urticae</i> herbivore. Finally, we identified large-effect quantitative trait loci (QTLs) on maize chromosomes one and six for resistance to <i>T. urticae</i> in one or the other of these three maize lines, and we showed that B96 was the apparent sole source of resistance alleles in our study. The latter finding is consistent with pedigree information for B49 and B75, which were produced previously in breeding programs that used B96. Datasets include phenotypic data for resistance screens of maize lines or cross-derived populations to spider mites, as well as genomic variant data used for QTL identification and haplotype analyses (as VCF files in an archive with a README file describing the contents of individual files). The high-throughput genomic sequencing reads upon which the variant data was based can be obtained publicly from the USA National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under identifiers PRJNA481365 and PRJNA556665. @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}@font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}