A comprehensive lettuce variation map reveals the impact of structural variations in agronomic traits

As an important vegetable crop, cultivated lettuce is grown worldwide and a great variety of agronomic traits have been preserved within germplasm collections. The mechanisms underlying these phenotypic variations remain to be elucidated in association with sequence variations. Compared with single nucleotide polymorphisms, structural variations (SVs) that have more impacts on gene functions remain largely uncharacterized in the lettuce genome.

Here, we produced a comprehensive SV set for 333 wild and cultivated lettuce accessions. Comparison of SV frequencies showed that the SVs prevalent in L. sativa affected the genes enriched in carbohydrate derivative catabolic and secondary metabolic processes. Genome-wide association analysis of seven agronomic traits uncovered potentially causal SVs associated with seed coat color and leaf anthocyanin content.

Our work characterized a great abundance of SVs in the lettuce genome, and provides a valuable genomic resource for future lettuce breeding.