Association Mapping of Seed Nutritional Elements in Wild (Cicer reticulatum L.) and Cultivated (Cicer arietinum L.) Chickpea Accessions from Turkey

Chickpea is the important grain legume or “pulse crop” that is used extensively for protein-rich seeds for human consumption. Chickpea seeds contain protein, rich carbohydrates, starch,  low fat and ash. Association mapping, also known as linkage disequilibrium (LD), to detect quantitative trait loci (QTL) controlling complex traits has become a popular approach in crop plants for determining association between marker and traits. The objectives of this study were to performed QTL associated with  7 different traits; content of Fe, Zn, Ca, and Se in 100 wild and 100 cultivated chickpea landraces from Turkey. The population was genotyped with 7,147 SNP markers using genotyping-by-sequencing. Significant LD was detected across the genome of chickpea accessions and the extent of LD varied along with 8 chickpea chromosomes, and existing of population structure might be the major factors of creating high LD. Phenotypic data SNP markers have been used for LD and association analyses in Tassel software according to General Linear Model  (GLM). In total, 75 marker–trait associations  significant were  detected for all traits. The present study reports marker loci and their assocition with traits identified in this study detected targeted regions for future association and demonstrates the use of AM is an effective method for identifying new genomic regions associated with economic important traits in chickpea accessions.