Yield is negatively correlated with nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat gene content in soybean

Abstract

The availability of increasing quantities of crop pangenome data permits the detailed association of gene content with agronomic traits. Here, we investigate disease resistance gene content of diverse soybean cultivars and report a significant negative correlation between the number of NLR resistance (R) genes and yield. We find no association between R-genes with seed weight, oil or protein content, and we find no correlation between yield and the number of RLK, RLP genes, or the total number of genes. These results suggest that recent yield improvement in soybean may be partially associated with the selective loss of NLR genes. Three quarters of soybean NLR genes do not show presence/absence variation, limiting the ability to select for their absence, and so the deletion or disabling of select NLR genes may support future yield improvement.