Abstract
Soybean is one of the most important economic crops for both China and the United States (US). The exchange of germplasm between these two countries has long been active. In order to investigate genetic relationships between Chinese and US soybean germplasm, 277 Chinese soybean accessions and 300 US soybean accessions from geographically diverse regions were analyzed using 5,361 SNP markers. The genetic diversity and the polymorphism information content (PIC) of the Chinese accessions was higher than that of the US accessions. Population structure analysis, principal component analysis, and cluster analysis all showed that the genetic basis of Chinese soybeans is distinct from that of the USA. The groupings observed in clustering analysis reflected the geographical origins of the accessions; this conclusion was validated with both genetic distance analysis and relative kinship analysis. FST-based and EigenGWAS statistical analysis revealed high genetic variation between the two subpopulations. Analysis of the 10 loci with the strongest selection signals showed that many loci were located in chromosome regions that have previously been identified as quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with environmental-adaptation-related and yield-related traits. The pattern of diversity among the American and Chinese accessions should help breeders to select appropriate parental accessions to enhance the performance of future soybean cultivars.
Highlights
Soybean originated in China, and has a history of planting for more than 4,000 years (Hymowitz and Newell, 1981)
In the United States (US)-set, the polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0 to 0.3750, with an average of 0.2408, and genetic diversity ranged from 0 to 0.5000, with an average of 0.2988 (Table 1 and Figure 2). These results indicated that the Chinese soybean accessions had a higher level of genetic diversity than the US soybean accessions
Fang et al (2017) dissected the genetic architecture of 84 agronomic traits and investigated the genetic networks underling their phenotypic correlations by 809 soybean accessions with diverse geographic distribution
Summary
Soybean originated in China, and has a history of planting for more than 4,000 years (Hymowitz and Newell, 1981). There are extensive soybean breeding programs in both China and the USA, most of which rely on a genetic base of Chinese origin (Cui et al, 2001). There have been over 400 publicly released cultivars in the USA, derived from ∼80 soybean ancestral lines (Gizlice et al, 1994), most of which were originally introduced from China in the early twentieth century (Li et al, 2001). Carter et al (2000) suggested that Chinese cultivars should be viewed as an important reservoir of genetic diversity that can be used to yet further expand the genetic base for North American soybean breeding efforts. Considering the ongoing increases in exchange and utilization of soybean germplasm between the two countries, assessing genetic relationships is a worthy area for further study
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