In the course of global climate change, central Europe is experiencing more frequent and prolonged periods of drought. The drought years 2018 and 2019 affected European beeches (Fagus sylvatica L.) differently: even in the same stand, drought damaged trees neighboured healthy trees, suggesting that the genotype rather than the environment was responsible for this conspicuous pattern. We used this natural experiment to study the genomic basis of drought resistance with Pool-GWAS. Contrasting the extreme phenotypes identified 106 significantly associated SNPs throughout the genome. Most annotated genes with associated SNPs (>70%) were previously implicated in the drought reaction of plants. Non-synonymous substitutions led either to a functional amino acid exchange or premature termination. A SNP-assay with 70 loci allowed predicting drought phenotype in 98.6% of a validation sample of 92 trees. Drought resistance in European beech is a moderately polygenic trait that should respond well to natural selection, selective management, and breeding.
In the course of global climate change, central Europe is experiencing more frequent and prolonged periods of drought. These drought events have severe and detrimental impacts on the forest ecosystem. The drought years 2018 and 2019 affected European beeches (Fagus sylvatica L.) in noticeably different ways: even in the same local stand, badly drought damaged trees immediately neighboured apparently healthy trees. This led to the hypothesis that the genotype rather than the environment was responsible for this conspicuous pattern. We used this natural experiment to study the genomic basis of drought resistance in a Pool-GWAS approach. Contrasting the extreme phenotypes, we identified 106 significantly associated SNPs throughout the genome. The majority of affected genes was previously implicated in drought reaction in other plant species. Most observed non-synonymous changes led either to a substantial functional amino acid exchange or a stop-codon. A SNP-assay with 70 informative loci allowed the successful prediction of drought phenotype from the multilocus genotype in 98.6% in a validation sample of 92 trees with Linear Discriminant Analysis. Drought resistance in European beech appeared to be a moderately polygenic trait that should nevertheless respond well to natural selection, selective management, and breeding. The widespread distribution of drought resistance across natural beech populations represents an important argument for maintaining genetic diversity in dynamic forest ecosystems. The results from this study could therefore contribute to harness beech wood forests against ongoing climate change.
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