Preliminary studies of genom-wide association mapping for some selected morphological characters of watermelons

Abstract

Developing more efficient tools for watermelon (Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai) breeding programs may greatly contribute to genetic improvement. The aims of this study were to investigate genome-wide association analysis (GWAS), and to develop regression models for some important watermelon traits such as yield, fruit weight, flesh color, total soluble solid, seed coat color, seed length and flowering time using 96 lines selected from 258 pure lines. An initial analysis was conducted to reduce sample size to 96 in order to avoid identical, highly similar and distant relatives causing low level of polymorphism and rare alleles. These 96 lines were morphologically and genetically characterized for several morphological characters under the eastern Mediterranean conditions, Adana, Turkey and PCR-based molecular markers. Associated markers were estimated by TASSEL program based on general linear model and a regression model because

Mapping a Partial Andromonoecy Locus in Citrullus lanatus Using BSA-Seq and GWAS Approaches

“…It also identified two SNPs on chromosome 1 as being responsible for the PA phenotype. GWAS was used to map other important agronomic traits in watermelon, melon and cucumber ( Nimmakayala et al, 2016 ; Yagcioglu et al, 2016 ; Dou et al, 2018a ; Dou et al, 2018b ; Hou et al, 2018 ; Wang et al, 2018 ; Bo et al, 2019b ; Bo et al, 2019a ; Oren et al, 2019 ). The major sex-determining gene for monoecy/andromonoecy in melon ( CmACS7 ) was also successfully detected using the GWAS approach ( Gur et al, 2017 ; Zhang H. et al, 2019 ), but so far no other andromonoecy locus had been found in cucurbits.…”