Peanut is an important legume providing products with nutrient dense including mineral nutrition. However, the genetic basis underlying the variations in the mineral composition in peanut is still unknown. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of the concentrations of 13 mineral elements combined with coexpression network were performed using a diverse panel of 120 genotypes mainly selected from the U.S. peanut mini core collection. A total of 36 significant quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with five elemental concentrations were identified with phenotypic variation explained (PVE) from 18.35% to 27.56%, in which 24 QTLs were for boron (B), 2 QTLs for copper (Cu), 6 QTLs for sodium (Na), 3 QTLs for sulfur (S), and 1 QTL for zinc (Zn). A total of 110 nonredundant candidate causal genes identified were significantly associated with elemental accumulation, which included one high-priority overlap (HPO) candidate gene arahy.KQD4NT, an important elemental/metal transporter gene located on LGB04 with position 5,413,913-5,417,353.
Keywords: GWAS; coexpression network; genetics; ionomic; peanuts.