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On the genetic architecture in a public tropical maize panel of the symbiosis between corn and plant growth-promoting bacteria aiming to improve plant resilience

Molecular Breeding volume 41, Article number: 63 (2021) Cite this article

Abstract

Exploring the symbiosis between plants and plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) is a new challenge for sustainable agriculture. Even though many works have reported the beneficial effects of PGPB in increasing plant resilience for several stresses, its potential is not yet widely explored. One of the many reasons is the differential symbiosis performance depending on the host genotype. This opens doors to plant breeding programs to explore the genetic variability and develop new cultivars with higher responses to PGPB interaction and, therefore, have higher resilience to stress. Hence, we aimed to study the genetic architecture of the symbiosis between PGPB and tropical maize germplasm, using a public association panel and its impact on plant resilience. Our findings reveal that the synthetic PGPB population can modulate and impact root architecture traits and improve resilience to nitrogen stress, and 37 regions were significant for controlling the symbiosis between PGPB and tropical maize. In addition, we found two overlapping SNPs in the GWAS analysis indicating strong candidates for further investigations. Furthermore, genomic prediction analysis with genomic relationship matrix computed using only significant SNPs obtained from GWAS analysis substantially increased the predictive ability for several traits endorsing the importance of these genomic regions for the response of PGPB. Finally, the public tropical panel reveals a significant genetic variability to the symbiosis with the PGPB and can be a source of alleles to improve plant resilience.

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Data Availability

Genomic data: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/5gvznd2b3n

Code availability

Code for image processing: https://github.com/RafaelYassue/Root-phenotyping

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Funding

This study was financed in part by São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP, Process: 19/04697–2; 17/24327–0), Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001, and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genetics, Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil

    Rafael Massahiro Yassue, Humberto Fanelli Carvalho, Raysa Gevartosky, Felipe Sabadin, Pedro Henrique Souza, Maria Leticia Bonatelli, João Lúcio Azevedo, Maria Carolina Quecine & Roberto Fritsche-Neto

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  1. Rafael Massahiro Yassue
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  2. Humberto Fanelli Carvalho
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  3. Raysa Gevartosky
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  4. Felipe Sabadin
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  6. Maria Leticia Bonatelli
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  7. João Lúcio Azevedo
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  8. Maria Carolina Quecine
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  9. Roberto Fritsche-Neto
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Correspondence to Rafael Massahiro Yassue.

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Yassue, R.M., Carvalho, H.F., Gevartosky, R. et al. On the genetic architecture in a public tropical maize panel of the symbiosis between corn and plant growth-promoting bacteria aiming to improve plant resilience. Mol Breeding 41, 63 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-021-01257-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-021-01257-6

Keywords

  • Shovelomics
  • Root architecture
  • GWAS
  • Symbiosis interaction
  • Genomic prediction