Abstract
Mandarins have many unique flavonoids with documented health benefits and that help to prevent chronic human diseases. Flavonoids are difficult to measure and cannot be phenotyped without the use of specialized equipment; consequently, citrus breeders have not used flavonoid contents as selection criteria to develop cultivars with increased benefits for human health or increased tolerance to diseases. In this study, peel, pulp, and seed samples collected from many mandarin accessions and their hybrids were analyzed for the presence of selected flavonoids with documented human health benefits. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) was used to identify SNPs associated with biosynthesis of flavonoids in these mandarin accessions, and there were 420 significant SNPs were found to be associated with 28 compounds in peel, pulp, or seed samples. Four candidate genes involved in flavonoid biosynthesis were identified by enrichment analysis. SNPs that were found to be associated with compounds in pulp samples have the potential to be used as markers to select mandarins with improved phytonutrient content to benefit human health. Mandarin cultivars bred with increased flavonoid content may provide value to growers and consumers.
Highlights
Beneficial flavonoid content may be a consumer-driven trait that potentially can be improved through breeding and used as a tool to differentiate mandarins with convenience traits in the marketplace, as mandarins with higher levels of healthful flavonoids and marketed as such may be preferred by health-conscious consumers
Citrus breeding is a long-term endeavor, and genome-wide association study (GWAS) provides the potential for genetic marker development based on genome locations associated with difficult to measure traits, that could in turn, accelerate citrus breeding progress
Difficult to measure traits have been the target of GWAS studies in many crops [34,35,36]
Summary
Beneficial flavonoid content may be a consumer-driven trait that potentially can be improved through breeding and used as a tool to differentiate mandarins with convenience traits in the marketplace, as mandarins with higher levels of healthful flavonoids and marketed as such may be preferred by health-conscious consumers. Flavonoids are a diverse, large group of plant-based compounds, many of which are reported to have beneficial health effects. Citrus contains many unique flavonoids known to have health-promoting properties, monoterpenes and flavanones, which are rarely present in other plants [2]. Mandarins are a large and phenotypically diverse group of citrus with a flavonoid composition that has been analyzed in “wild Chinese” [3] and conventional cultivars [4]. Differences in mandarin flavonoid contents suggests a genetic component that can be exploited in a modern plant breeding program
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