Landscape genomics reveals genetic signals of environmental adaptation of African wild eggplant

Crop wild relatives possess desirable traits that confer resilience to
various environmental stresses. We applied landscape genomics, that
associates environment with genomic variation to understand the genetic
basis of their adaptation.    In this study, we applied
landscape genomics to examine the differences in allele frequency of
15,416 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) among 153 accessions of wild
eggplant relatives from Africa, the principal hotspot of these wild
relatives. Further, we explored the correlation between the genetic
variations and the bio-climatic and soil conditions at their collection
sites.   Our results showed that the environment has a greater
impact on the genetic variation in the eggplant wild relative populations
compared to the geographical distances between collection sites while
controlling for population structure. These findings indicate the
relevance of the environment in shaping genetic variation in eggplant
relatives over time. We detected also candidate SNPs associated with ten
environmental factors. Some of these SNPs signal genes involved in
pathways that help with adaptation to environmental stresses such as
drought, heat, cold, salinity, pests, and diseases.