Resequencing of 558 Chinese mungbean landraces identifies genetic loci associated with key agronomic traits

Mungbean plays important role in supplying food and nutritional security in many tropical countries. However, the genetic basis of its agronomic traits remains poorly understood. Identifying the genetic basis of mungbean's diverse landraces will provide important insight to facilitate the breeding of elite varieties for sustainable agriculture. In the present study, we resequenced 558 Chinese mungbean landraces and produced a comprehensive map of mungbean genomic variation. We classified the 558 landraces into two distinct subpopulations, which exhibited strong geographic distribution patterns, and then phenotyped all landraces in six different environments. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) produced 110 signals significantly associated with nine agronomic traits, for which several candidate genes were identified. The results in this manuscript would broaden our understanding of genetic basis of mungbean agronomic traits. We believe that the genome-wide variations identified here should be valuable resources for future breeding studies of mungbean.