Genome-Wide Association Study of Agronomic and Physiological Traits Related to Drought Tolerance in Potato

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is often considered a water-sensitive crop and its production can be threatened by drought events, making water stress tolerance a trait of increasing interest. In this study, a panel of 144 tetraploid potato genotypes was evaluated for two consecutive years (2019 and 2020) to observe the variation of several physiological traits such as chlorophyll content and fluorescence, stomatal conductance, NDVI, and leaf area and circumference. In addition, agronomic parameters such as yield, tuber fresh weight, tuber number, starch content, dry matter and reducing sugars were determined. GGP V3 Potato array was used to genotype the population, obtaining a total of 18,259 high-quality SNP markers. Marker-trait association was performed using GWASpoly package in R software and Q + K linear mixed models were considered. This approach allowed us to identify eighteen SNP markers significantly associated with the studied traits in both treatments and years, which were related to genes with known functions. Markers related to chlorophyll content and number of tubers under control and stress conditions, and related to stomatal conductance, NDVI, yield and reducing sugar content under water stress, were identified. Although these markers were distributed throughout the genome, the SNPs associated with the traits under control conditions were found mainly on chromosome 11, while under stress conditions they were detected on chromosome 4. These results contribute to the knowledge of the mechanisms of potato tolerance to water stress and are useful for future marker-assisted selection programs.