Abstract
Vigorous early-season growth rate allows crops to compete more effectively against weeds and to conserve soil moisture in arid areas. These traits are of increasing economic importance due to changing consumer demand, reduced labor availability, and climate-change-related increasing global aridity. Many crop species, including common bean, show genetic variation in growth rate, between varieties. Despite this, the genetic basis of early-season growth has not been well-resolved in the species, in part due to historic phenotyping challenges. Using a range of UAV- and ground-based methods, we evaluated the early-season growth vigor of two populations. These growth data were used to find genetic regions associated with several growth parameters. Our results suggest that early-season growth rate is the result of complex interactions between several genetic and environmental factors. They also highlight the need for high-precision phenotyping provided by UAVs. The quantitative trait loci (QTLs) identified in this study are the first in common bean to be identified remotely using UAV technology. These will be useful for developing crop varieties that compete with weeds and use water more effectively. Ultimately, this will improve crop productivity in the face of changing climatic conditions and will mitigate the need for water and resource-intensive forms of weed control.
Highlights
Weeds are responsible for worldwide yield losses approximately equal to those incurred by all other pathogens and animal pests combined [1], and their control is a major economic and ecological burden
The most significant SNP from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of the Middle American Diversity Panel (MDP) was associated with canopy growth rate and was located at position 34,512,442 on Pv07, approximately 3 kb from a SNP identified by Moghaddam et al [27] at position 34,509,509, in their evaluation of the canopy architecture
We developed novel UAV-based methods to study the genetic basis of early growth traits in a major crop species, common bean
Summary
Weeds are responsible for worldwide yield losses approximately equal to those incurred by all other pathogens and animal pests combined [1], and their control is a major economic and ecological burden. The strong positive effect of early-season growth rate on crop competitiveness against weeds, has been studied in many major crops [2,3,4,5]. Rapid early-season growth shades and insulates the soil, reducing the amount of soil water wasted to the atmosphere, due to evaporation [10,11]. This is of critical importance for crop climate resilience, as future decades are predicted to be increasingly arid [12]. Breeding to improve early season growth rate would improve crop productivity and efficiency with relatively few drawbacks, but the trait is poorly understood genetically in most crops
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