Development and Characterization of a Common Bean Segregant Population for Domestication Traits Analyses and Breeding Purposes

To realize benefits of genetics for crop improvement, geneticists and breeders need to identify genes and molecular variants responsible for phenotypic variations, and to position these along the genome of the targeted crops. The domestication process of plants and animals represents not only a milestone in the history of the human race and a unique tool for the study of evolutionary processes, but also a crucial model to discover important agronomic trait related genes and genomic regions and to exploit the genetic diversity of the wild relative. Many studies have clearly indicated that the use of wild relatives can have a tremendous impact on crop improvements.

In common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, we have developed an introgression line segregant population based on domestication syndrome traits. The wild donor was the Mesoamerican wild G12873 P. vulgaris accession, while the recurrent parent is represented by the Andean variety Midas. These materials are crucial to overcome some of the genetic problems related to the use of wild germplasm in plant breeding (i.e. the dominance of most wild alleles at domestication loci, the occurrence of deleterious traits that tend to mask useful variants, and the presence of various levels of incompatibility between domesticated crops and their wild relatives), and to capitalize the genetic diversity in exotic germplasm and use it for plant breeding as well as to discover and validate genes and functions.

This segregant population was also deeply characterized genotypically, using GBS and other Next Generation Sequencing techniques, and phenotypically.