Journal Article

Genome-wide association mapping of date palm fruit traits

Krueger, Robert R., Amiri, Khaled M. A., Purugganan, Michael D., Kudrna, David, Ferrand, Sylvie, Dhar, Michael I., Powell, Robyn F., Flowers, Jonathan M., Lee, Seunghee, Gros-Balthazard, Muriel, Masmoudi, Khaled, Zhang, Jianwei, Fresquez, Zoë A., Lemansour, Alain, Copetti, Dario, Wing, Rod A., Hazzouri, Khaled M., Lebrun, Marc, Leitch, Ilia J., Rosas, Ulises, Talag, Jayson

2019

Overview

Date palms ( Phoenix dactylifera ) are an important fruit crop of arid regions of the Middle East and North Africa. Despite its importance, few genomic resources exist for date palms, hampering evolutionary genomic studies of this perennial species. Here we report an improved long-read genome assembly for P. dactylifera that is 772.3 Mb in length, with contig N50 of 897.2 Kb, and use this to perform genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of the sex determining region and 21 fruit traits. We find a fruit color GWAS at the R2R3-MYB transcription factor VIRESCENS gene and identify functional alleles that include a retrotransposon insertion and start codon mutation. We also find a GWAS peak for sugar composition spanning deletion polymorphisms in multiple linked invertase genes. MYB transcription factors and invertase are implicated in fruit color and sugar composition in other crops, demonstrating the importance of parallel evolution in the evolutionary diversification of domesticated species. Date palm is an important fruit crop in the Middle East and North Africa. Here, the authors report an improved genome assembly of this species and perform GWAS mapping of sex determining region and 21 fruit traits using high density SNP data generated from re-sequencing of the mapping population.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 45/23 / 45/43 / 631/181/2474 / 631/208/457/649 / 631/208/8 / 631/449/1870 / Alleles / Arid regions / Arid zones / beta-fructofuranosidase / beta-Fructofuranosidase - genetics / Biological evolution / Chromosome Mapping / Codon, Initiator / Color / colored varieties / Composition / dates (fruit) / DNA, Plant - genetics / domestication / enzyme activity / Evolution / exons / Fructose / Fruit - chemistry / Fruit - genetics / fruit color / Fruits / Gene deletion / gene expression / Gene mapping / genetic variation / Genome, Plant - genetics / Genome-wide association studies / Genome-Wide Association Study / Genomes / Glucose / Humanities and Social Sciences / Insertion / Invertase / Life Sciences / loci / Mapping / multidisciplinary / Mutation / Phenotype / Phoeniceae - genetics / Phoenix dactylifera / Pigmentation - genetics / Polymorphism, Genetic / Retroelements / retrotransposons / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Sequence Analysis, DNA / sex determination / Sex Determination Processes - genetics / single nucleotide polymorphism / Starch / start codon / Sucrose / Sugar / sugar content / Transcription factors