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Keywords

Chenopodium berlandieri, Chenopodium quinoa, heat tolerance, outcrossing

Abstract

Despite increasing in worldwide popularity, quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is not well adapted to environments outside its native range of cultivation in the Andean region of South America. To try to improve quinoa’s growth in new environments, particularly in hot tropical and arid climates, we previously crossed quinoa with its wild relative, pitseed goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri), which is naturally adapted to regions where optimal vegetative and reproductive growth is limited due to adverse biotic and abiotic conditions. Over the course of multiple generations, we have selected the best performing progeny based on their ability to survive in warmer environments. Investigating the chromosomal regions of the pitseed goosefoot genome that have introgressed into the superior lines would allow for the identification of possible genetic loci that may have promoted greater tolerance to hotter climates or that may confer other advantageous traits. To identify these potential loci, we sequenced the genomes of the quinoa and pitseed goosefoot parental lines and of the selected offspring and then mapped the genomes of the offspring against the parental genomes. We then looked at regions of the pitseed goosefoot genome that were incorporated into the genomes of the selected progeny and compared those recurring segments with genes found in those segments. We identified several candidate heat tolerance genes within the introgressed regions. These candidates will be further investigated in future studies to determine their impact on growth in hot environments.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Language

English

College

Life Sciences

Department

Plant and Wildlife Sciences

University Standing at Time of Publication

Senior

Identifying Potentially Advantageous Genes in Introgressed Regions of Wild Pitseed Goosefoot Chromosomes into Quinoa

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