Increasing the Efficiency of Oilseed Breeding through a Genome-Wide Association Study of Agronomically and Economically Important Traits.

Concerns over the use of fossil fuels and the U.S. dependence on imported fossil fuels have focused attention on the development of biofuels like biodiesel and more recently hydrotreated renewable jet (HRJ) fuel. Canola and rapeseed from Brassica napus have the potential to produce large quantities of vegetable oil feedstock and to have a significant acreage increase in the U.S. over the next 10-20 years. However, if these oils are to have a significant impact on reducing greenhouse gases or U.S. dependency on imported oils, then large genetic gains need to be achieved by breeding new, improved cultivars. Future advances in adaptability, yield, oil content, and resistance to abiotic and biotic stresses will be enhanced through the development and validation of molecular markers for more efficient selection of important traits in breeding programs. The goal of this project is to construct translational genomics platforms to improve the efficiency of cultivar development for winter and spring type industrial rapeseed varieties. More than 800 winter and spring canola/rapeseed accessions from a broad geographic distribution were analyzed with Sequenced-based Genotyping, producing more than 300,000 SNPs at genome-wide coverage. All the spring and winter accessions were grown in field trials in 2013 and 2014 and a wide range of morphological, agronomic, and quality traits were evaluated. We will present the patterns of population structure and genetic diversity in the near global collection of Brassica napus. In addition to these findings, we will show initial results from a genome-wide association study that identified genomic regions associated with important agronomic, morphological, and oil quality traits. This work exemplifies the benefit of genomic approaches to support breeding efforts through the accelerated development of new higher yielding oilseed cultivars.