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

Author(s)

Yassue, Rafael Massahiro ^[1] ; Carvalho, Humberto Fanelli ^[1] ; Gevartosky, Raysa ^[1] ; Sabadin, Felipe ^[1] ; Souza, Pedro Henrique ^[1] ; Bonatelli, Maria Leticia ^[1] ; Azevedo, Joao Lucio ^[1] ; Quecine, Maria Carolina ^[1] ; Fritsche-Neto, Roberto ^[1]

Affiliation

^[1] Univ Sao Paulo, Luiz de Queiroz Coll Agr, Dept Genet, Piracicaba, SP - Brazil

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: MOLECULAR BREEDING; v. 41, n. 10 OCT 2021.
• Web of Science Citations: 0

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. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/24327-0 - TCGA: an tropical corn germplasm assembly for genomic prediction and high-throughput phenotyping studies
• Grantee: Roberto Fritsche Neto
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• FAPESP's process: 19/04697-2 - Establishment of a synthetic bacterial community and its genetic association with tropical maize
• Grantee: João Lúcio de Azevedo
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants