Genomewide association study of ionomic traits on diverse soybean populations from germplasm collections

Germplasm collections are invaluable resources for plant science and the elemental content of the seeds is a strong indication of the plant’s response to its specific environment. In this study, Ziegler et al. have selected 1,653 soybean accessions from the USDA Soybean Germplasm Collection and seeds came from grow-outs in 14 different location-by-year combinations. Then, the elemental profile of seeds was assayed and lines were genotyped using SoySNP50K beadchip. After fitting a multilocus mixed model for the 20 ionomic traits measured, different sets of SNPs were identified depending on the experiment and the stringency level. HAM13, a gene previously shown to be involved in cadmium content in soybean, was the candidate gene underlying a locus strongly associated with cadmium content. Hence, this study showed the possibility of using ionomic traits of seeds from germplasm collection to identify markers linked to genes important for crop improvement. (Summary by Stephanie Saade) Plant Direct. 10.1002/pld3.33