Genome-Wide Association Study of Bacterial Blight Resistance in Soybean

Bacterial blight caused by <i>Pseudomonas syringae</i> pv. <i>glycinea</i> (Psg) is a widespread foliar disease. Although four <i>Resistance to Pseudomonas syringae</i> pv. <i>glycinea</i> (<i>Rpg</i>) <i>1</i> to <i>4</i> (<i>Rpg1∼4</i>) genes that have been observed to segregate in a Mendelian pattern have been reported to confer resistance to Psg in soybean, the genetic basis of quantitative resistance to bacterial blight in soybean remains unclear. In the present study, the Psg resistance of two soybean association panels consisting of 573 and 213 lines, respectively, was phenotyped in multiple environments in 2014 to 2016. Genome-wide association study was performed using two models, FarmCPU and BLINK, to identify Psg resistance loci. A total of 40 soybean varieties with high level of Psg resistance were identified, and 14 quantitative trait loci (QTLs) were detected on 12 soybean chromosomes. These QTLs were identified for the first time. The majority of the QTLs were detected only in one or the other association panels, while <i>qRPG-18-1</i> was detected in both association panels for at least one growing season. A total of 46 candidate Psg resistance genes were identified from the <i>qRpg_13_1</i>, <i>qRPG-15-1</i>, and <i>qRPG-18-1</i> loci based on gene function annotation. In addition, we found the genomic region covering <i>rpg1-b</i> and <i>rpg1-r</i> harbored the synteny with a genomic region on chromosome 15 and identified 16 nucleotide binding site-leucine-rich repeat (<i>NBS-LRR</i>) genes as the candidate Psg resistance genes from the synteny blocks. This study provides new information for dissecting the genetic control of Psg resistance in soybean.