Yield Components in the USDA Pea Core Collection.

Yield per se is difficult trait to make significant genetic gains due to the quantitative nature of inheritance. Nevertheless, yield is the most important trait for crop improvement. Steady progress is noted for food legumes, but future gains will depend on harvesting allelic diversity harbored in ex situ germplasm collections. Exciting new approaches are emerging around association studies and genomic selection within large germplasm collections. Recently, a 66K SNP genotyping of the USDA pea core collection was published. We applied this data for association analysis on yield component data collected in 2016 and 2017 (four environments). We will report significant marker-trait associations for days to flower, nod to first flower, seed per pod, pods per plant and seed weight/yield. Significant SNPs will be converted to breeder-friendly KASP assays for application in pea breeding programs.