Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of a Camelina sativa Spring Panel

Abstract

There is a need to explore renewable alternatives (e.g., biofuels) that can produce energy sources to help reduce the reliance on fossil oils. In addition, the consumption of fossil oils adversely affects the environment and human health via the generation of waste water, greenhouse gases, and waste solids. Camelina sativa , originated from southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, is being re-embraced as an industrial oilseed crop due to its high seed oil content (36–47%) and high unsaturated fatty acid composition (>90%), which are suitable for jet fuel, biodiesel, high-value lubricants and animal feed. C. sativa ’s agronomic advantages include short time to maturation, low water and nutrient requirements, adaptability to adverse environmental conditions and resistance to common pests and pathogens. These characteristics make it an ideal crop for sustainable agricultural systems and regions of marginal land. However, the lack of genetic and genomic resources has slowed the enhancement of this emerging oilseed crop and exploration of its full agronomic and breeding potential. Here, a core of 213 spring C. sativa accessions was collected and genotyped. The genotypic data was used to characterize genetic diversity and population structure to infer how natural selection and plant breeding may have affected the formation and differentiation within the C. sativa natural populations, and how the genetic diversity of this species can be used in future breeding efforts. A total of 6,192 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified using genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) technology. The average polymorphism information content (PIC) value of 0.29 indicate moderate genetic diversity for the C. sativa spring panel evaluated in this report. Population structure and principal coordinates analyses (PCoA) based on SNPs revealed two distinct subpopulations. Sub-population 1 (POP1) contains accessions that mainly originated from Germany while the majority of POP2 accessions (>75%) were collected from Eastern Europe. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) identified 4% variance among and 96% variance within subpopulations, indicating a high gene exchange (or low genetic differentiation) between the two subpopulations. These findings provide important information for future allele/gene identification using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and marker-assisted selection (MAS) to enhance genetic gain in C. sativa breeding programs.

Genetic diversity analysis of a Flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) global collection

“…The transition SNPs were more frequent than transversion SNPs, indicating that transition mutations are more tolerable to natural selection (27). A similar result was also found in other species such as Camelina sativa (28), Camellia sinensis (29), Hevea brasiliensis (30) and Brassica napus (31,32), that may be due to synonymous mutations in protein-coding regions (33). We also calculated PIC and expected heterozygosity (He) for each marker.…”

Comprehensive genotyping of Brazilian Cassava (Manihot esculentaCrantz) Germplasm Bank: insights into diversification and domestication

“…Polymorphism information content ( ) indicates measures of genetic diversity (Botstein et al 1980;Niu et al 2019). values for this study ranges from 0.142 to 0.375 (with an average of 0.18), in congruence with the maximum value of 0.375 for biallelic loci (Nei 1987;Botstein et al 1980;Luo et al 2019 'from the identified genetic groups reflects the rate at which variation is lost and may predict the ability to respond to future changes/breeding strategy and significance of conservation approach to genetic diversity and adaptive variation in cassava breeding in Brazil. The estimate of H gives a better understanding of the present and future importance of genetic drift of cassava populations and useful information of germplasm management in Brazil.…”

Genetic Diversity of Field Pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) Reveals Untapped Variability and Paths Toward Selection for Domestication

“…While genetic diversity and population structure have been evaluated in related crop species including rapeseed and camelina [18,19], few evaluations of natural pennycress germplasm have been completed. Forty-one pennycress accessions were evaluated for variation in seed size and fatty acid profile, but no genetic analysis was completed [20].…”