GWAS of adventitious root formation in roses identifies a putative phosphoinositide phosphatase (SAC9) for marker-assisted selection.

Rose propagation by cuttings is limited by substantial genotypic differences in adventitious root formation. To identify possible genetic factors causing these differences and to develop a marker for marker-assisted selection for high rooting ability, we phenotyped 95 cut and 95 garden rose genotypes in a hydroponic rooting system over 6 weeks. Data on rooting percentage after 3 to 6 weeks, root number, and root fresh mass were highly variable among genotypes and used in association mappings performed on genotypic information from the WagRhSNP 68 K Axiom SNP array for roses. GWAS analyses revealed only one significantly associated SNP for rooting percentage after 3 weeks. Nevertheless, prominent genomic regions/peaks were observed and further analysed for rooting percentage after 6 weeks, root number and root fresh mass. Some of the SNPs in these peak regions were associated with large effects on adventitious root formation traits. Very prominent were ten SNPs, which were all located in a putative phosphoinositide phosphatase SAC9 on chromosome 2 and showed very high effects on rooting percentage after 6 weeks of more than 40% difference between nulliplex and quadruplex genotypes. SAC9 was reported to be involved in the regulation of endocytosis and in combination with other members of the SAC gene family to regulate the translocation of auxin-efflux PIN proteins via the dephosphorylation of phosphoinositides. For one SNP within SAC9, a KASP marker was successfully derived and used to select genotypes with a homozygous allele configuration. Phenotyping these homozygous genotypes for adventitious root formation verified the SNP allele dosage effect on rooting. Hence, the presented KASP derived from a SNP located in SAC9 can be used for marker-assisted selection in breeding programs for high rooting ability in the future.