Candidate gene discovery of Botrytis cinerea resistance in grapevine based on QTL mapping and RNA-seq

Abstract

Grape gray mold disease (Botrytis cinerea) is widespread during grape production especially in Vitis vinifera and causes enormous losses to the grape industry. In nature, the grapevine cultivar ‘Beta ‘ (Vitis riparia × Vitis labrusca) showed high resistance to grape gray mold. Until now, the candidate genes and their mechanism of gray mold resistance were poorly understood. In this study, we firstly conducted quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping for grape gray mold resistance based on two hybrid offspring populations that showed wide separation in gray mold resistance. Notably, two stable QTL related to gray mold resistance were detected and located on linkage groups LG2 and LG7. The phenotypic variance ranged from 6.86% to 13.70% on LG2 and 4.40% to 11.40% on LG7. Combined with RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), one structural gene VlEDR2 (Vitvi02g00982) and three transcription factors VlERF039 (Vitvi00g00859), VlNAC047 (Vitvi08g01843), and VlWRKY51 (Vitvi07g01847) that may be involved in VlEDR2 expression and grape gray mold resistance were selected. This discovery of candidate gray mold resistance genes will provide an important theoretical reference for grape gray mold resistance mechanisms, research, and gray mold-resistant grape cultivar breeding in the future.

Identification of Faba bean genetic loci associated with quantitative resistance to the fungus Botrytis fabae, causal agent of chocolate spot

“…In contrast to effector-triggered immunity (ETI) to biotrophs, conferred by major resistance genes, many small-effect QTLs have been found to be linked to partial resistance to necrotrophs, e.g. to Botrytis cinerea in Arabidopsis thaliana (Corwin et al, 2016), tomato (Finkers et al, 2007), and grape vine (Su et al, 2023); A. fabae (Ocaña-Moral et al, 2017) and B. fabae (Gela et al, 2022) in V. faba, and to Mycosphaerella pinodes in pea (Timmerman-Vaughan et al, 2002. In a large GWAS study in A. thaliana inoculated with multiple isolates of B. cinerea, a small number of receptor-like kinases and NLRs involved in PAMP-triggered immunity-type pathogen recognition and signalling were identified along with other biological functions, including transcription, RNA modification, signalling, vesicular transport, and detoxification among more than 3,000 candidate genes (Corwin et al, 2016).…”

Berry texture QTL and candidate gene analysis in grape (Vitis vinifera L.)

“…The physical interval limits were determined by the flanking bin markers of the CI for stable QTLs, and the candidate genes were identified according to the CI of each stable QTL on the consensus map [ 76 , 77 ]. Candidate genes for berry texture were defined as promising candidate genes based on their potential functional annotations and the available literature.…”

Colour-analyzer: a new dual colour model-based imaging tool to quantify plant disease

“…While the use of image processing programs like ImageJ to quantify disease symptoms has been the standard in the field for many years, it is a relatively time-consuming process, and ill equipped for accurate measurements of irregularly shaped lesions. Other methods such as the use of the hardware YMJ-C smart leaf area meter [20] and the software Adobe Photoshop [21] have also been used but can be cost prohibitive. To this end we sought to develop a tool to rapidly quantify fungal lesions, and for this study we focused on those caused by Botrytis cinerea on tomato leaves.…”