Association Genetics Identifies Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Related to Kernel Oil Content and Quality in Camellia oleifera

Camellia oleifera, as an important nonwood tree species for seed oil in China, has received enormous attention owing to its high unsaturated fatty acid contents benefited to human health. It is necessary to examine allelic diversity of key genes that are associated with oil production in C. oleifera cultivars with a large variation of fatty acid compositions. In this study, we performed the association analysis between four key genes (two CoSAD and two Cofad2) coding fatty acid desaturases and traits including oil content and fatty acid composition. We identified two single nucleotide insertion–deletion (InDel) and 362 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the four candidate genes by sequencing an association population (216 accessions). Single-marker (or haplotype) and traits association tests were conducted by linkage disequilibrium (LD) approaches to detect significant marker–trait associations. Validation population (279 hybrid individuals from six full-sibs families) studies were performed to validate the function of allelic variations significantly associated. In all, 90 single marker-trait and one haplotype-trait associations were significant in association population, and these loci explained 1.87–17.93% proportion of the corresponding phenotypic variance. Further, six SNP marker–trait associations (Q Cofad2-A, CoSAD1, and CoSAD2 were successfully validated in the validation population. The SNP markers identified in this study can potentially be applied for future marker-assisted selection to improve oil content and quality in C. oleifera.