Rich variant phenotype of Gossypium hirsutum L. saturated mutant library provides resources for cotton functional genomics and breeding

Abstract

Cotton is not only a raw material for the textile industry, but also an important strategic material. However, traditional breeding methods have narrowed the genetic diversity of current cotton cultivars. Abundant germplasm resources is a solid foundation for breeding, the use of chemical mutagenesis to create abundant mutation is of great significance to cotton breeding. This study used ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) to mutagenize upland cotton material TM-1. First, we obtained a mutant library with abundant mutations and abundant phenotypes of the leaf, boll, locules numbers and plant architecture,. Second, based on the genome-wide analysis of the leaf and plant structure mutant., it showed that the library had a saturated genome mutations. Further GO and KEGG analysis showed SNPs were significantly enriched in DNA repair and response to hormone, non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) and homologous recombination (HR) pathways, which explained the mutated trait. In addition, we screened candidate gene (Gh_D05G364200) for crumpled leaf by BSA and transcriptome sequencing. Above all, the mutant library we obtained provides abundant resources for cotton functional genomics and breeding.