Empowering cotton breeding programs through the strategic exploration and exploitation of phenotypic diversity of genetic resources under climate change conditions
Naimatullah Mangi,
Muhammad Shahid Iqbal,
Fan Shuli,
Muhammad Tauhid Iqbal,
Badr Alharthi,
Ghulam Hussain Jatoi,
Zareen Sarfraz,
Qifeng Ma,
Xuwu Sun
Affiliations
Naimatullah Mangi
National Key Laboratory of Cotton Bio-breeding and Integrated Utilization, State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Adaptation and Improvement, Key Laboratory of Plant Stress Biology, School of Life Sciences, Henan University, 85 Minglun Street, Kaifeng, 475001, PR China; State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, Institute of Cotton Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (ICR, CAAS), Anyang, 455000, PR China
Muhammad Shahid Iqbal
State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, Institute of Cotton Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (ICR, CAAS), Anyang, 455000, PR China; Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, 518124, PR China
Fan Shuli
State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, Institute of Cotton Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (ICR, CAAS), Anyang, 455000, PR China
Muhammad Tauhid Iqbal
Department of Horticulture, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Sub-campus Depalpur, Okara, Punjab, Pakistan
Badr Alharthi
Department of Biology, University College of Al Khurmah, Taif University, PO. Box 11099, Taif, 21944, Saudi Arabia
Ghulam Hussain Jatoi
Department of Plant Pathology, Faculty of Crop Protection, Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, Sindh, Pakistan, 70060
Zareen Sarfraz
State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, Institute of Cotton Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (ICR, CAAS), Anyang, 455000, PR China; Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, 518124, PR China
Qifeng Ma
State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, Institute of Cotton Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (ICR, CAAS), Anyang, 455000, PR China; Corresponding authors.
Xuwu Sun
National Key Laboratory of Cotton Bio-breeding and Integrated Utilization, State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Adaptation and Improvement, Key Laboratory of Plant Stress Biology, School of Life Sciences, Henan University, 85 Minglun Street, Kaifeng, 475001, PR China; Corresponding authors.
Plant phenotype assessment approaches have facilitated crop improvement in recent years by providing opportunities for the dissection of complex nature quantitative traits. Fiber quality and yield are significant economic traits with a complex nature mainly due to interactions between its genetic architecture and the surrounding environment. These economic traits showed stagnant performance in recent decades due to eroded genetic diversity via the selection process. It necessitates exploiting conserved germplasm resources to rebuild genetic diversity within cotton cultivars. Compared to the conventional univariate selection methods using a single trait at a time, the multivariate analysis extends its selection to multiple variables for the selection of genotypes. In evaluating a core collection of cotton over two years using various phenotyping methods, multivariate analysis, particularly principal component analysis (PCA), was employed to assess genetic diversity. The PCA analysis demonstrated substantial variability of 39.83% and 45.37% across two years, highlighting a significant impact on yield and fiber quality attributes. The cumulative eigenvalues of principal components exceeding 80% supported the classification of accessions into six distinct groups based on their trait variability. Both PCA and cluster analysis successfully categorized accessions into six groups, indicating high diversity and suggesting their potential utility in breeding programs. The diverse genotypes identified in this study would be potential resources for variety development and accelerated breeding programs, particularly focusing on stress resilience under climate change scenarios. By utilizing these diverse genotypes, there is an opportunity to enhance breeding strategies and accelerate the development of improved cotton varieties with enhanced yield and fiber quality attributes. The significance of our study lies in its demonstration of the importance of genetic diversity in improving yield and fiber quality attributes, thus underscoring its relevance to cotton breeding programs.
