Abstract
Growth of higher plants in acid soils is limited by a series of factors. For example, several toxic ions (i.e. aluminum, manganese, iron and proton) inhibited the root growth and in turn reducing the ability of water and nutrient uptake. To identify genetic factors controlling tolerant mechanism to such factors, we performed QTL analyses using a set of 100 RILs made from a cross between Arabidopsis Ler and Col. After the one week culture in test solutions containing toxic level of ions, we measured root length and used as data sets for computer software of QTL analyses. We grew all the RIL at the same time to minimize environmental variance, and thus obtained relatively high values of heritability in a broad sense. Some of single factor QTLs and epistatic interactions were shared by several stress factors, indicating genes controlling multiple-tolerance might be involved in Arabidopsis.
