Abstract
Background: Frogeye leaf spot (FLS) is a destructive fungal disease in soybean production. The most economical and effective strategy to control FLS is to use resistant cultivars. However, the use of a limited number of resistant loci in FLS management will be countered by the emergence of new, and more virulent, Cercospora sojina races. Thus, we identified quantitative trait loci (QTL) that control resistance to FLS and identified novel resistant genes using a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on 234 Chinese soybean cultivars.Results: A total of 30,890 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers were used to estimate linkage disequilibrium (LD) and population structure. The GWAS results identified six loci (p<0.001) distributed over chromosomes (Chr.) 2, 5, 20 comprising 69 SNPs significantly associated with FLS resistance. No previous studies have reported resistance loci in these regions. Subsequently, 55 genes in three resistance-related haplotype blocks were annotated. Glyma20g31630 encoding pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH), Glyma05g28980 encoding mitogen-activated protein kinase 7 (MPK7), and Glyma20g31510, Glyma20g31520 encoding the calcium-dependent protein kinase 4(CDPK4) in the haplotype blocks were found to be associated with FLS resistance.Conclusions: The proteins encoded by these four genes directly, or indirectly participate in the biological pathway of salicylic acid (SA) and jasmonic acid (JA). These two plant hormones can induce the expression of disease resistance related genes and are essential for plant systemic acquired resistance (SAR). Therefore, the novel loci and candidate genes provide genomic location information for further advances in FLS resistance gene cloning and molecular breeding.
Finding type 2 diabetes causal single nucleotide polymorphism combinations and functional modules from genome-wide association data
