Genome-wide association mapping for root traits associated with frost tolerance in faba beans using KASP-SNP markers

Abstract

Frost is an abiotic stress factor that threatens plant development and crop productivity not only in cold regions but also in temperate zones. Roots play an important role in plant growth during frost stress. Therefore, variation in root characteristics could be studied to improve frost tolerance in winter faba bean. The present study aimed to identify the genomic regions that control frost tolerance in a winter faba bean population by focusing on root-related traits. A set of 185 genotypes were tested for frost tolerance under artificial frost growth conditions at −16°C, −18°C, and −19°C in a growth chamber. Frost stress reduced the root-related parameters in all genotypes, with a wide variation among genotypes. A genome-wide association study identified nine novel single-nucleotide polymorphisms that are associated with the root-related traits. The most frost-tolerant genotypes were identified; two genotypes, S_028 and S_220, exhibited remarkable performance under frost stress. Moreover, they harbored all four of the alleles favorable for frost tolerance. Remarkably, two markers showed genetic pleiotropic effects with positive allele effects on root fresh matter and root dry matter. Thus, both genotypes can be implemented in a breeding program to provide the alleles for healthier roots under frost conditions to develop more frost-tolerant varieties, and the two markers can be used to screen large collections to select for frost tolerance. These results may provide novel insights for improving frost tolerance in faba beans and in other legume crops.

Genome-wide association study as a powerful tool for dissecting competitive traits in legumes

“…Abiotic stress tolerance SNP (Zou et al, 2020) Chickpea Agronomic traits SNP (Bajaj et al, 2015a;Bajaj et al, 2016;Kujur et al, 2015a;Upadhyaya et al, 2015;Upadhyaya et al, 2017;Basu et al, 2018;Orsak et al, 2019;Fayaz et al, 2022;Srungarapu et al, 2022) Abiotic stress tolerance SNP (Thudi et al, 2014;Kohli et al, 2020;Ahmed et al, 2021;Kalve et al, 2022) Physiological traits SNP (Basu et al, 2019) Quality traits (Upadhyaya et al, 2016a;Upadhyaya et al, 2016b;Parida et al, 2017;Samineni et al, 2022) Biotic stress resistance (Li et al, 2017;Agarwal et al, 2019;Agarwal et al, 2022;Farahani et al, 2022;Raman et al, 2022) Beans Agronomic traits/ Quality SNP (Warsame et al, 2019;Rasool et al, 2022) Abiotic stress SNP (Ali et al, 2016;Li et al, 2017;Hu et al, 2019b;Breria et al, 2020;Abou-Khater et al, 2022;Maalouf et al, 2022;Sallam et al, 2022) Biotic stress SNP (Faridi et al, 2021) Lentils Agronomic traits SNP, SSR (Kumar et al, 2018a;Kumar et al, 2018b;Singh et al, 2019;Karthika et al, 2021;Neupane et al, 2022) Quality traits, Seed quality SNP (Khazaei et al, 2017;…”