Dissecting Seed Shape in Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) with High-Throughput Phenotyping and Genome-Wide Association Studies
Date
2023-09-05
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
0009-0000-5744-3732
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Seed shape is an important trait for dehulling and splitting during the milling process of lentil. A high-throughput image-based phenotyping system was previously developed to provide direct metrics from single seeds. This study aimed to take this new, and more precise system, to phenotype and dissect lentil seed shape and identify new genetic markers for the lentil breeding program. To accomplish this, seed from 324 diverse genotypes that had been grown at six site-years in two major lentil growing environments (temperate and Mediterranean) were imaged. Significant differences were identified between seeds from temperate and Mediterranean macro-environments for four seed shape parameters: diameter, circularity (measure of uniformity of the seed edges), height (seed thickness), and plumpness. Each seed parameter had high heritability, suggesting a low environmental influence, which is also supported by an absence of significant correlations with phenological parameters or temperature. A stability analysis of the seed shape traits across the six site-years revealed that seed height has fewer stable lines when compared with circularity, diameter, and plumpness and that for each of these traits there is a range of stability, making some genotypes more stable than others across site-years. Genome-wide association studies were used to identify QTL for most seed shape traits, with diameter having the most consistent identification of significant QTL. The new phenotyping system used in this study coupled with multi-locus GWAS models achieved similar results when compared with previous studies, although it can help breeding programs identify new candidate genes with improved precision by extracting multiple traits like seed shape and seed color simultaneously.
Description
Keywords
Lentil, Seed, shape, Phenotyping, GWAS.
Citation
Degree
Master of Science (M.Sc.)
Department
Plant Sciences
Program
Plant Sciences