AUTHOR=Manjunatha P. B. , Aski Muraleedhar S. , Mishra Gyan Prakash , Gupta Soma , Devate Narayana Bhat , Singh Akanksha , Bansal Ruchi , Kumar Shiv , Nair Ramakrishnan Madhavan , Dikshit Harsh Kumar 

TITLE=Genome-wide association studies for phenological and agronomic traits in mungbean (Vigna radiata L. Wilczek)

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2023.1209288

DOI=10.3389/fpls.2023.1209288

ISSN=1664-462X

ABSTRACT=Mungbean (Vigna radiata L. Wilczek) is one of the important warm season food legumes contributing substantially to nutritional security and environmental sustainability. The genetic complexity of yield-associated agronomic traits in mungbean is not well understood. To dissect the genetic basis of phenological and agronomic traits, we evaluated 153 diverse mungbean genotypes for two phenological (Days to heading and days to maturity) and eight agronomic traits (leaf nitrogen status using SPAD, plant height, number of primary branches, pod length, number of pods per plant, seeds per pod, 100-seed weight and yield per plant) under two environmental conditions. Wide array of phenotypic variability was apparent among the studied genotypes for all the studied traits. The broad sense heritability of traits ranged from 0.31 to 0.95 and 0.21 to 0.94 at Delhi and Ludhiana locations, respectively. A total of 55,634 genome wide single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were obtained by genotyping-by-sequencing method, of which 15,926 SNPs were retained for genome-wide association studies (GWAS). GWAS with Bayesian-information and Linkage-disequilibrium Iteratively Nested Keyway (BLINK) model identified 50 SNPs significantly associated with phenological and agronomic traits. Twelve SNPs were found to be significantly associated with phenological traits across environments explaining 7-18.5% of phenotypic variability and thirty-eight SNPs were significantly associated with agronomic traits which explained 4.7-27.6% of the phenotypic variability. Maximum number of SNPs (15) were located on chromosome 1 followed by 7 SNPs each on chromosome 2 and chromosome 8. The BLAST search identified 19 genes to be putative candidate genes which were involved in light signalling, nitrogen responses, phosphorus (P) transport and remobilization, photosynthesis, respiration, metabolic pathways and regulating growth and development. Digital expression analysis of 19 genes revealed significantly higher expression of 12 genes viz.