Quantitative Control of Early Flowering in White Lupin (Lupinus albus L.).

Sandra Rychel-Bielska,Bartosz Kozak,Anna Surma,Renata Galek,Michał Książkiewicz,Wojciech Bielski

doi:10.3390/ijms22083856

Abstract

White lupin (Lupinus albus L.) is a pulse annual plant cultivated from the tropics to temperate regions for its high-protein grain as well as a cover crop or green manure. Wild populations are typically late flowering and have high vernalization requirements. Nevertheless, some early flowering and thermoneutral accessions were found in the Mediterranean basin. Recently, quantitative trait loci (QTLs) explaining flowering time variance were identified in bi-parental population mapping, however, phenotypic and genotypic diversity in the world collection has not been addressed yet. In this study, a diverse set of white lupin accessions (n = 160) was phenotyped for time to flowering in a controlled environment and genotyped with PCR-based markers (n = 50) tagging major QTLs and selected homologs of photoperiod and vernalization pathway genes. This survey highlighted quantitative control of flowering time in white lupin, providing statistically significant associations for all major QTLs and numerous regulatory genes, including white lupin homologs of CONSTANS, FLOWERING LOCUS T, FY, MOTHER OF FT AND TFL1, PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTOR 4, SKI-INTERACTING PROTEIN 1, and VERNALIZATION INDEPENDENCE 3. This revealed the complexity of flowering control in white lupin, dispersed among numerous loci localized on several chromosomes, provided economic justification for future genome-wide association studies or genomic selection rather than relying on simple marker-assisted selection.

Highlights

White lupin (Lupinus albus L.) is an annual legume plant cultivated for animal feed and human consumption in Europe, Africa and Australia [1]
Flowering and Thermoneutrality Is Present in Primitive and Domesticated Germplasm
Besides FTc1, our study revealed significant correlations between time to flowering and sequence polymorphism in markers anchored in the sequences of the following genes: CO-like, ELF1, FLD, FRI, FY, LD, MFT, PIF4, SEPALLATA 3 (SEP3), SKIP1, and VIP3

Summary

Introduction

White lupin (Lupinus albus L.) is an annual legume plant cultivated for animal feed and human consumption in Europe, Africa and Australia [1]. It is a valuable component in crop rotation and organic farming, thanks to its nitrogen fixation via diazotrophic symbiosis and mobilization of soil phosphorus by formation of cluster roots [2,3,4]. White lupin consumption has positive nutraceutical impact, reducing hyperglycaemia, hypercholesterolemia and hypertension [8]. Considering the agronomic characteristics of white lupin, there is still high potential for further yield increases and drought tolerance improvement by exploitation of existing germplasm resources [10,11,12,13]

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Discussion

Conclusion