Genomic insight into variations associated with flowering-time and early-maturity in pigeonpea mutant TAT-10 and its wild type parent T21

Abstract

Pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millspaugh] is an important grain legume crop with a broad range of 90 to 300 days for maturity. To identify the genomic variations associated with the early maturity, we conducted whole-genome resequencing of an early-maturing pigeonpea mutant TAT-10 and its wild type parent T21. A total of 135.67 and 146.34 million sequencing reads were generated for T21 and TAT-10, respectively. From this resequencing data, 1,397,178 and 1,419,904 SNPs, 276,741 and 292,347 InDels, and 87,583 and 92,903 SVs were identified in T21 and TAT-10, respectively. We identified 203 genes in the pigeonpea genome that are homologs of flowering-related genes in Arabidopsis and found 791 genomic variations unique to TAT-10 linked to 94 flowering-related genes. We identified three candidate genes for early maturity in TAT-10; Suppressor of FRI 4 (SUF4), Early Flowering In Short Days (EFS), and Probable Lysine-Specific Demethylase ELF6. The variations in ELF6 were predicted to be possibly damaging and the expression profiles of EFS and ELF6 also supported their probable role during early flowering in TAT-10. The present study has generated information on genomic variations associated with candidate genes for early maturity, which can be further studied and exploited for developing the early-maturing pigeonpea cultivars.