Fine Mapping and Molecular Cloning of Rps 11 in Soybean

Phytophthora root and stem rot (PRSR) is a major disease in soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.), and causes massive worldwide yield loss every year. The most effective and environmentally friendly management strategy is deployment of race-specific resistant soybean cultivars. The objective of this study is to identify and clone novel Rps (Resistance to P. sojae) gene conferred in soybean landrace PI94527. We have demonstrated that a single locus, denoted as Rps11, is responsible to the resistance to all the isolates we used in this study, indicating a broad resistance spectrum. In addition, Rps11 was mapped to 61 kb genomic region defined by simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker BARCSOYSSR_07_0295 and insertion/deletion marker InDel_2, according to the soybean reference genome, using a large mapping population including 2640 F3 individuals. Five genes were predicted in this interval based on the reference genome, including a gene coding a NB-ARC domain containing disease resistance protein, which is considered to be the best candidate gene so far. Future work including finer mapping from a larger population comprising 7680 F4 individuals, validating the function of the candidate gene using technologies such as qPCR, QTL_seq as well as CRISPR/CAS 9.