Genome-wide association studies revealed DArTseq loci associated with agronomic traits in Turkish faba bean germplasm

Faba bean is a major legume crop that contains a substantial amount of nutritious compounds that our bodies require for maintenance and is also a valuable crop in various other aspects. The present study aimed to investigate agronomic trait diversity in Turkish faba bean germplasm. A total of 372 faba bean genotypes and 3 commercial cultivars were used as plant material and field experiments were conducted in three Turkish provinces (Adana, Izmir, and Sivas) over the two growing seasons 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 according to the augmented block design. A total of 14 agronomic traits were observed and analysis of variance elucidated that the examined factors had a high and significant effect on the most morphological traits (p < 0.0001), Furthermore the results showed a high degree of variation in the first pod height (21.68-38.74 cm), plant height (57.18-71.41 cm), pod length (5.66-7.53 cm), days to flowering (51.00-61.33), pod weight (57.51-70.68 g), 100 seed weight (62.56-231.04 g), biological yield (31.13-44.56 g/plant), grain yield per plant (31.21-41.39 g) and grain yield (227.14-270.78 kg/Da) traits. Correlation analysis showed a positive and significant relationship between the yield per plant, the days to flowering, the number of seeds per pod and with 100 seed weight, the number of pods per plant, pod length and pod weight, and finally, pod length and pod weight. Genotyping by sequencing (GBS) analysis was performed and resulted in 23,661 DArTseq markers. Marker-trait association was performed using MLM (Kinship + PCA) approach that revealed a total of 34 markers for the evaluated traits. We think that resulted markers will be helpful for the future marker-assisted breeding of faba bean.