Zhengzhou Fruit Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Zhengzhou, China.
Lingnan Guangdong Laboratory of Modern Agriculture, Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
Nat Genet. 2019 Nov;51(11):1607-1615. doi: 10.1038/s41588-019-0522-8. Epub 2019 Nov 1.
Melon is an economically important fruit crop that has been cultivated for thousands of years; however, the genetic basis and history of its domestication still remain largely unknown. Here we report a comprehensive map of the genomic variation in melon derived from the resequencing of 1,175 accessions, which represent the global diversity of the species. Our results suggest that three independent domestication events occurred in melon, two in India and one in Africa. We detected two independent sets of domestication sweeps, resulting in diverse characteristics of the two subspecies melo and agrestis during melon breeding. Genome-wide association studies for 16 agronomic traits identified 208 loci significantly associated with fruit mass, quality and morphological characters. This study sheds light on the domestication history of melon and provides a valuable resource for genomics-assisted breeding of this important crop.
甜瓜是一种经济上重要的水果作物，已经被种植了几千年；然而，其遗传基础和驯化历史在很大程度上仍然未知。在这里，我们报道了来自 1175 个甜瓜品种重测序的基因组变异的综合图谱，这些品种代表了该物种的全球多样性。我们的结果表明，甜瓜发生了三次独立的驯化事件，其中两次发生在印度，一次发生在非洲。我们检测到了两组独立的驯化选择，导致了在甜瓜的培育过程中，两个亚种 melo 和 agrestis 具有不同的特征。对 16 个农艺性状的全基因组关联研究鉴定出了 208 个与果实质量、品质和形态特征显著相关的位点。这项研究揭示了甜瓜的驯化历史，并为这种重要作物的基因组辅助育种提供了有价值的资源。
