Abstract
Mutation breeding is useful for improving agronomic characteristics of various crops. In this study, we conducted a genetic diversity and association analysis of soybean mutants to assess elite mutant lines. On the basis of phenotypic traits, we chose 208 soybean mutants as a mutant diversity pool (MDP). We then investigated the genetic diversity and inter-relationships of these MDP lines using target region amplification polymorphism (TRAP) markers. Among the different TRAP primer combinations, polymorphism levels and polymorphism information content (PIC) values averaged 59.71% and 0.15, respectively. Dendrogram and population structure analyses divided the MDP lines into four major groups. According to an analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA), the percentage of inter-population variation among mutants was 11.320 (20.6%), whereas mutant intra-population variation ranged from 0.231 (0.4%) to 14.324 (26.1%). Overall, intra-population genetic similarity was higher than that of inter-populations. In an analysis of the association between TRAP markers and agronomic traits using three different statistical approaches based on the single factor analysis (SFA), the Q general linear model (GLM), and the mixed linear model (Q+K MLM), we detected six significant marker–trait associations involving five phenotypic traits. Our results suggest that the MDP has great potential for soybean genetic resources and that TRAP markers are useful for the selection of soybean mutants for soybean mutation breeding.
Highlights
Soybeans (Glycine max L.), used for food, livestock feed, and biofuel, is one of the most important agricultural crops worldwide
Asummary of agronomic and morphological traits of the 208 mutant diversity pool (MDP) lines is shown in Table 2 and Supplementary Table S1
Changes were observed in color-related traits, including flower stem coloranthocyanin (FC), seed coat color (SCC), seed hilum color (SHC), and SA. These results indicate that MDP lines were successfully constructed through multiplex genetic and phenotypic mutation induced by gamma irradiation
Summary
Soybeans (Glycine max L.), used for food, livestock feed, and biofuel, is one of the most important agricultural crops worldwide. Gamma radiation is a very effective tool to induce genetic variation in many plant characters, with the resulting changes dependent on the irradiation dose. Various plant organisms, such as seeds, pollen, whole plants, and embryoid bodies, can be irradiated [7]. Because gamma rays can cause various types of DNA damage, including single- or double-strand breaks and substitutions [8,9], agronomic traits, such as flowering, maturation date, seed coat color, chloroplast number, and biomass yield, are frequently altered in soybean [10,11]. 170 mutant varieties of soybean, the second-most registered species after rice, are found in the FAO/IAEA Mutant Variety Database (http://mvd.iaea.org)
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