Genomic Basis for Drought Resistance in European Beech Forests Threatened by Climate Change

Overview

Journal Elife

Specialty Biology

Date 2021 Jun 16

PMID 34132196

Citations 10

Authors

Markus Pfenninger

Friederike Reuss

Angelika Kiebler

Philipp Schonnenbeck

Cosima Caliendo

Susanne Gerber

Berardino Cocchiararo

Sabrina Reuter

Nico Bluthgen

Karsten Mody

Bagdevi Mishra

Miklos Balint

Marco Thines

Barbara Feldmeyer

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

In the course of global climate change, Central Europe is experiencing more frequent and prolonged periods of drought. The drought years 2018 and 2019 affected European beeches ( L.) differently: even in the same stand, drought-damaged trees neighboured healthy trees, suggesting that the genotype rather than the environment was responsible for this conspicuous pattern. We used this natural experiment to study the genomic basis of drought resistance with Pool-GWAS. Contrasting the extreme phenotypes identified 106 significantly associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) throughout the genome. Most annotated genes with associated SNPs (>70%) were previously implicated in the drought reaction of plants. Non-synonymous substitutions led either to a functional amino acid exchange or premature termination. An SNP assay with 70 loci allowed predicting drought phenotype in 98.6% of a validation sample of 92 trees. Drought resistance in European beech is a moderately polygenic trait that should respond well to natural selection, selective management, and breeding.

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