Genome-Wide Association in Tomato Reveals 44 Candidate Loci for Fruit Metabolic Traits

Genome-wide association studies have been successful in identifying genes involved in polygenic traits and are valuable for crop improvement. Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a major crop and is highly appreciated worldwide for its health value. We used a core collection of 163 tomato accessions composed of S. lycopersicum, S. lycopersicum var cerasiforme, and Solanum pimpinellifolium to map loci controlling variation in fruit metabolites. Fruits were phenotyped for a broad range of metabolites, including amino acids, sugars, and ascorbate. In parallel, the accessions were genotyped with 5,995 single-nucleotide polymorphism markers spread over the whole genome. Genome-wide association analysis was conducted on a large set of metabolic traits that were stable over 2 years using a multilocus mixed model as a general method for mapping complex traits in structured populations and applied to tomato. We detected a total of 44 loci that were significantly associated with a total of 19 traits, including sucrose, ascorbate, malate, and citrate levels. These results not only provide a list of candidate loci to be functionally validated but also a powerful analytical approach for finding genetic variants that can be directly used for crop improvement and deciphering the genetic architecture of complex traits.