Description

Cultivated peanut is allotetraploid with low variability at the DNA level. Wild relatives of cultivated peanut show higher allelic variation that can be used to enlarge the genetic basis of cultivated varieties. An introgression pipeline has been established to transfer genes from wild relatives to cultivated peanut. This involved phenotyping wild diploid species for biotic stresses, developing fertile and stable synthetic allotetraploids, developing and phenotyping of interspecific populations to map QTLs and introgress them into elite varieties. This project benefits from our knowledge of the structuration of the peanut genepools and on the whole genome sequences of the diploid and tetraploid species. The expected outputs are:

• Develop new synthetic allotetraploids and pre-breeding populations to mine the positive alleles that remain in the wild species
• Evaluate existing interspecific populations
• Develop high throughput genotyping approaches based on SNP markers suitable for tetraploid species to monitor the introgression of the wild chromosome segments