Polyploidy in vegetables: revealing genetic secrets of crop evolution and breeding success

Newswise — A research team is using advanced sequencing techniques to dissect the genetic and epigenetic nuances of polyploidy, elucidating the role of polyploidy in vegetable crop evolution and breeding. Their findings highlight the critical contribution of polyploidy to plant diversity and adaptability, revealing “Darwin’s disgusting mystery” of angiosperm expansion. This review highlights the potential of polyploidy to improve crop yield and quality and advocates its application in vegetable breeding for economic and dietary benefits. Despite considerable progress in sequencing and multi-omics analyses, challenges remain, including understanding the combined effects of polyploidization and utilizing technologies in non-model crops. The study calls for increased research on minor vegetable crops, highlighting the importance of polyploidy in addressing global food security challenges and promoting healthy diets amid growing health concerns about high-calorie foods.

Vegetables, vital to human health and increasingly economically important, are often polyploid, which contributes to their larger organ size and enhanced environmental adaptability. This trait is prevalent in key crops such as wheat and cotton, providing significant advantages to breeding, including unique flavor and wider adaptability. The utilization of advanced sequencing technologies has greatly improved our understanding of vegetable genomics, especially polyploids, allowing detailed studies of their evolutionary history and genetic diversity. Despite these advances, challenges remain in accurately assembling complex genomes due to polyploid sequence similarities, hindering deeper molecular insights. The current research direction is to further explore the phenotypic advantages and molecular mechanisms of polyploidy to unravel the complexity of its genome, thereby promoting vegetable germplasm innovation and breeding utilization.

A Research (DOI: 10.48130/vegres-0024-0005) Published in vegetable research February 5, 2024 A comprehensive overview of vegetable polyploidy research facilitated by high-throughput sequencing enhances our understanding of plant evolution and contributes to efficient vegetable breeding through polyploidy.

Genome sequencing has revolutionized the understanding of vegetable evolution by revealing ancient whole-genome duplication (WGD) events, which were critical for crop domestication and breeding. Through high-quality genome assembly, researchers mapped conserved homologous regions and identified orthologous genes across regions. cucumber Species, Revealing Ancient gourd– Common tetraploidization (CCT) events, which are important for Cucurbitaceae plant.Nonetheless, many Cucurbitaceae Crops retain genetic information from their diploid ancestors, exhibiting genetic stability rare in polyploid evolution.Research on Chinese cabbage and garlic further emphasizes how WGD events contribute to genome expansion and diversification. Polyploids have complex genomes, making their assembly challenging due to sequencing limitations. Recent advances in long-read sequencing have improved the ability to analyze polyploid genomes, revealing structural variation and facilitating the assembly of complex genomes such as tetraploid potato. Allopolyploidy results from the merging of different genomes and results in significant changes in gene structure and expression. These changes are gradually stabilized through diploidization, which helps species adapt to new environments. This review highlights the potential of polyploidy to enhance crop diversity and adaptability, which is critical to address global food security. Comparative genomic analyzes reveal different fates of polyploid subgenomes, with some becoming dominant, affecting gene expression and agricultural value. Integrated multi-omics analysis can now enable efficient crop breeding, provide insights into the complex phenotypes of polyploid vegetables, and pave the way for germplasm enhancement through polyploidy.

Professor Yu Xiaqing, the lead researcher of the study, said: “This review summarizes the progress in vegetable polyploid research driven by sequencing technology and the follow-up research on important traits and genes, which will further promote germplasm innovation and breeding utilization. through Polyploidy of vegetables.

This work highlights the need for further research, particularly in non-model vegetable crops, to exploit polyploidy for agricultural innovation and to meet global needs for food security and dietary health. This requires more affordable advanced technologies and greater emphasis on diversification of vegetable germplasm for healthier diets, which points to a promising direction for artificial intelligence-assisted polyploid crop breeding.

###

refer to

DOI

10.48130/vegres-0024-0005

Original source URL

https://doi.org/10.48130/vegres-0024-0005

author

Du Weixuan1, Wang Xiaoning1, Zhao Xiaokun1, Pei Yun1,2, Xia Lei1, Zhao Qinzheng1, Cheng Chunyan1, Wang Yuhui1, Li Ji1, Qian Chuntao1, Lou Qunfeng1, Zhou Rong3, Karl-O Thor Ottoson 3, Chen Jinfeng 1, Yu Xia Qing 1*

Affiliation

1 State Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Improvement and Utilization, Nanjing Agricultural University, No. 1 Weigang, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province 210095

2 College of Agriculture, Guizhou University, Guiyang 550025

3Department of Food Science, Plants, Food and Climate, University of Aarhus, Agro Food Park 48, Aarhus N DK-8200, Denmark