Combined Use of Gene Preservation Lines and Artificially Manipulated Genetic Stocks in Omics Approach of Cultivated Allium Species

The laboratory of Vegetable Crop Science in Yamaguchi University (VegeYU) is a core organization in Asia for Allium germplasm collection. The collection of VegeYU could be classified into the following two groups, Group (A): gene preservation lines and Group (B): artificially manipulated genetic stocks. The Group (A) mainly consists of asexually propagated vegetable crops, such as shallot, wakegi onion, Japanese bunching onion (JBO), garlic, rakkyo and wild species. The constituent of Group (B) are interspecific hybrid, polyploid, haploid, doubled haploid, alien chromosome addition line, alloplasmic line, segregating population, etc. Our research via the usage of these genetic resources aims to enable a holistic approach to profile the phytochemical composition of Allium vegetables for biomedical and plant breeding studies, through collaborative development of resources for metabolomics-high throughput chemical profiling by mass spectrometry. Common metabolomic and bioinformatic approaches are now using to characterize variation in the gene preservation lines of shallot and JBO as well as the genetic stocks of shallot/JBO chromosome addition lines for which genomics resources have been generated in our previous studies. This attempt will develop capability and plant materials to support metabolomics-informed biomedical studies of whole plants or extracts, as well as enabling detection of associations between phytochemical content, gene expression and specific genome regions. The knowledge and technologies output will be applicable for targeting breeding, production and processing for enhanced functionality.