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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Columbia, Missouri » Plant Genetics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #335051
Title: Genomewide association study of ionomic traits on diverse soybean populations from germplasm collections

Author
item Ziegler, Gregory
item Nelson, Randall
item GRANADA, STEPHANIE - Danforth Plant Science Center
item Krishnan, Hari
item Gillman, Jason
item Baxter, Ivan

Submitted to: Plant Direct
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/14/2017
Publication Date: 1/15/2018
Citation: Ziegler, G.R., Nelson, R.L., Granada, S., Krishnan, H.B., Gillman, J.D., Baxter, I.R. 2018. Genomewide association study of ionomic traits on diverse soybean populations from germplasm collections. Plant Direct. 2(1):1-14. https://doi.org/10.1002/pld3.33.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/pld3.33

Interpretive Summary: The elemental content of a soybean seed is a determined by both genetic and environmental factors and is an important component of its nutritional value. The elemental content is stable, making the samples stored in germplasm repositories an intriguing source of experimental material. To test the efficacy of using samples from germplasm banks for gene discovery, we analyzed the elemental profile of seeds from 1653 lines in the USDA Soybean Germplasm Collection. We observed large differences in the elemental profiles based on where the lines were grown, which lead us to break up the genetic analysis into multiple small experiments. Despite these challenges, we were able to identify regions of genome controlling elemental accumulation as well as lines with extremely high or low accumulation levels of several elements. Our results suggest that elemental analysis of samples in seed banks can be leveraged to assist in crop improvement efforts.

Technical Abstract: The elemental content of a soybean seed is a determined by both genetic and environmental factors and is an important component of its nutritional value. The elemental content is stable, making the samples stored in germplasm repositories an intriguing source of experimental material. To test the efficacy of using samples from germplasm banks for gene discovery, we analyzed the elemental profile of seeds from 1653 lines in the USDA Soybean Germplasm Collection. We observed large differences in the elemental profiles based on where the lines were grown, which lead us to break up the genetic analysis into multiple small experiments. Despite these challenges, we were able to identify candidate SNPs controlling elemental accumulation as well as lines with extreme elemental accumulation phenotypes. Our results suggest that elemental analysis of germplasm samples can identify SNPs in linkage disequilibrium to genes, which can be leveraged to assist in crop improvement efforts.