High level of somatic mutations detected in a diploid banana wild relative Musa basjoo

Plants are thought to lack an early segregating germline and often retain both asexual and sexual reproduction, both of which may allow somatic mutations to enter the gametes or clonal progeny, and thereby impact plant evolution. It is yet unclear how often these somatic mutations occur during plant development and what proportion is transmitted to their sexual or cloned offspring. Asexual "seedless" propagation has contributed greatly to the breeding in many fruit crops, such as citrus, grapes and bananas. Whether plants in these lineages experience substantial somatic mutation accumulation is unknown. To estimate the somatic mutation accumulation and inheritance among a clonal population of plant, here we assess somatic mutation accumulation in Musa basjoo, a diploid banana wild relative, using 30 whole-genome resequenced samples collected from five structures, including leaves, sheaths, panicle, roots and underground rhizome connecting three clonal individuals. We observed 18.5 high proportion de novo somatic mutations on average between each two adjacent clonal suckers, equivalent to ~ 2.48 × 10^-8 per site per asexual generation, higher than the per site per sexual generation rates (< 1 × 10^-8) reported in Arabidopsis and peach. Interestingly, most of these inter-ramet somatic mutations were shared simultaneously in different tissues of the same individual with a high level of variant allele fractions, suggesting that these somatic mutations arise early in ramet development and that each individual may develop only from a few apical stem cells. These results thus suggest substantial mutation accumulation in a wild relative of banana. Our work reveals the significance of somatic mutation in Musa basjoo genetics variations and contribute to the trait improvement breeding of bananas and other asexual clonal crops.