A QTL approach in faba bean highlights the conservation of genetic control of frost tolerance among legume species

Abstract

Frost is a major abiotic stress of winter type faba beans (Vica faba L.) and has adverse effects on crop yield. Climate change, far from reducing the incidence of frost events, is making these phenomena more and more common, severe, and prolonged. Despite the important interaction that the environment has in the tolerance of faba bean to frost, this trait seems to have good levels of heritability. Several QTLs for frost tolerance have already been reported, however, a more robust identification is needed to more precisely identify the genomic regions involved in faba bean tolerance to sub-zero temperatures. Several pea (Pisum sativum L.) and barrel medic (Medicago truncatula L.) frost tolerance QTLs appear to be conserved between these two species, furthering the hypothesis that the genetic control of frost tolerance in legume species might be more generally conserved. In this work, the QTL mapping in two faba bean recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations connected by a common winter-type parent has led to the identification of five genomic regions involved in the control of frost tolerance on linkage groups I, III, IV, and V. Among them, a major and robust QTL of great interest for marker-assisted selection was identified on the lower part of the long-arm of LGI. The synteny between the faba bean frost tolerance QTLs and those previously identified in other legume species such as barrel medic, pea or soybean highlighted at least partial conservation of the genetic control of frost tolerance among different faba bean genetic pools and legume species. Four novel RILs showing high and stable levels of tolerance and the ability to recover from freezing temperatures by accumulating frost tolerance QTLs are now available for breeding programs.

Construction of a high-density genetic map for faba bean (Vicia faba L.) and quantitative trait loci mapping of seed-related traits

“…Carrillo-perdomo et al (2020) constructed a highdensity genetic map containing gene-based SNP markers with a length of 1,547.71 cM, and an average distance of 0.89 cM. Recently, an integrated genetic linkage map containing 6,895 SNPs, with a length of 3,324.48 cM was constructed from two F 2 populations by Li et al (2023).The construction of a fine linkage map for faba bean can greatly improve the efficiency of related genetic research and crop breeding and enable the establishment of marker selection and QTL mapping associated with economically important traits (Khazaei et al, 2014;Aguilar−Benitez et al, 2021;Gutierrez and Torres, 2021;Carrillo-Perdomo et al, 2022).…”

The Exceptionally Large Genomes of the Fabeae Tribe: Comparative Genomics and Applications in Abiotic and Biotic Stress Studies

“…Fundamental knowledge and molecular tools for breeding have been boosted on the legume tolerance against abiotic stresses after peas entered the genomic era with the pea Caméor genome sequenced. Diverse studies have been performed to better understand the legume tolerance mainly to drought [64][65][66][67][68] and heat [19,68,70] stresses but also to frost [73,74], cold [75], and salinity [78]. For drought, the pea cv.…”

“…Syntenic studies were also performed between QTLs identified in faba bean for frost tolerance and the pea cv. Caméor genome and conservation of genetics for this trait were observed [74]. Mapping of transcriptome and miRNA sequencing reads against pea cv.…”