Haplotype differences in common bean accessions confer the capacity to flower under Scandinavian summer conditions.

Abstract

The capacity to flower under long days has been a major pre-requisite for the adaptation of the common bean to European climates. The complexity of such adaptation has been studied, mostly under the optics of QTL mapping, but still the genetic basis of the trait remains elusive. In the current study we sequenced a collection of >200 accessions of P. vulgaris of Mesoamerican, Andean and European origin, for which the flowering capacity under long days during the summer season in Sweden was evaluated. Our variant calling strategy allowed us to identify 16.9e6 SNPs and 38.6e3 long structural variants. Furthermore, we observed gene-pool specific selective sweeps that correspond to the independent domestication events in the Americas. GWAS and haplotype structure tests identified single nucleotide and structural variants strongly associated to the capacity to flower under long days, particularly in chromosome 1.