397V Poster Online - Virtual Posters
Tuesday June 07, 11:00 AM - 3:00 PM

Authors:
Rim Gubaev ¹; Stepan Boldyrev ¹; Elena Martynova ¹; Alina Chernova ¹; Tatyana Kovalenko ²; Tatyana Peretyagina ²; Svetlana Goryunova ^{1, 4}; Denis Goryunov ^{1, 5}; Zhanna Mukhina ³; Cecile Ben ¹; Laurent Gentzbittel ¹; Philipp Khaitovich ¹; Yakov Demurin ²

Affiliations:
1) Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia; 2) Pustovoit All-Russia Research Institute of Oil Crops, Krasnodar , Russia; 3) All-Russia Rice Research Institute, Krasnodar, Russia; 4) Institute of General Genetics, Moscow, Russia; 5) Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

Keywords:
Complex traits

Tocopherols and oleic acid protect sunflower oil against thermooxidation and significantly affect its quality. The tocopherol complex in plants includes four different forms, namely, α-, β-, γ-, and δ-tocopherols. Importantly, vitamin E activity decreases from α- to δ-tocopherol, while in vitro antioxidant activity in contrast increases in the row. Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fatty acid that in combination with γ-tocopherol, and δ-tocopherols significantly increases oil thermostability. Therefore, one of the pressing tasks in sunflower breeding is the creation of plants that would allow producing oil with balanced tocopherol composition and oleic acid content. To facilitate the identification of new loci linked to these traits, we performed association mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTL) based on the high-throughput sequencing data for sunflower plants. For association mapping, two F2 populations of 144 plants each were obtained from two independent crosses of parents contrast in tocopherol composition and oleic acid content from a collection of All-Russia Research Institute of Oil Crops (VNIIMK). Tocopherol composition was measured using thin-layer chromatography while the oleic acid content was measured by means of gas chromatography followed by mass spectrometry. We applied genotyping-by-sequencing with subsequent SNP calling in Tassel-GBS to construct two genetic maps using R/qtl package. For quantitative mapping, the proportions of each of the four tocopherols and oleic acid were used. For qualitative mapping of tocopherol composition, plants' phenotypes were classified into four tocopherol classes based on the tocopherol composition. For qualitative mapping of oleic acid phenotypes were classified into high and low oleic classes. Different approaches were applied, including interval mapping and composite interval mapping. Loci associated with α-, γ-, and δ-tocopherol were located on chromosome 8 while loci associated with β-tocopherol content were found on chromosomes 8 and 1. For oleic acid, a locus located on chromosome 14 was shown to be significantly associated. SNPs associated with the studied traits were verified on the independent plant sample. The QTLs and corresponding SNPs identified will facilitate the marker-assisted selection of sunflower as well as bring new knowledge on the genetic control of tocopherol composition and oleic acid content of the sunflower oil.
The reported study was funded by RFBR projects number 20-316-90051.