Genetic analysis of protein content and oil content in soybean by genome-wide association study

Hui Jin; Xue Yang; Haibin Zhao; Xizhang Song; Yordan Dimitrov Tsvetkov; YuE Wu; Qiang Gao; Rui Zhang; Jumei Zhang

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1182771

Genetic analysis of protein content and oil content in soybean by genome-wide association study

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jun 6:14:1182771. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1182771. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Hui Jin¹, Xue Yang¹, Haibin Zhao¹, Xizhang Song¹, Yordan Dimitrov Tsvetkov¹, YuE Wu¹, Qiang Gao², Rui Zhang¹, Jumei Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Forage and Grassland Sciences, Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Harbin, China.
² Horticultural Branch of Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Harbin, China.

Abstract

Soybean seed protein content (PC) and oil content (OC) have important economic value. Detecting the loci/gene related to PC and OC is important for the marker-assisted selection (MAS) breeding of soybean. To detect the stable and new loci for PC and OC, a total of 320 soybean accessions collected from the major soybean-growing countries were used to conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) by resequencing. The PC ranged from 37.8% to 46.5% with an average of 41.1% and the OC ranged from 16.7% to 22.6% with an average of 21.0%. In total, 23 and 29 loci were identified, explaining 3.4%-15.4% and 5.1%-16.3% of the phenotypic variations for PC and OC, respectively. Of these, eight and five loci for PC and OC, respectively, overlapped previously reported loci and the other 15 and 24 loci were newly identified. In addition, nine candidate genes were identified, which are known to be involved in protein and oil biosynthesis/metabolism, including lipid transport and metabolism, signal transduction, and plant development pathway. These results uncover the genetic basis of soybean protein and oil biosynthesis and could be used to accelerate the progress in enhancing soybean PC and OC.

Keywords: Glycine max L.; genome-wide association study (GWAS); marker-assisted selection (MAS); oil content; protein content; soybean.

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang (YQ2022C030), Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences Project (2020FJZX011), the Heilongjiang Scientific Research Institution Foundation (CZKYF2021C001), Establishment of Joint Chinese-Bulgarian Laboratory for Molecular Biology of Crop Germplasm Resources (KY201901009), China Agriculture Research System (CARS-22) and Breeding, Popularization and Industrialization Development of New Soybean Varieties with Middle to Late Maturity, High Yield, High Quality, and Wide Adaptability.