Major Contribution of Flowering Time and Vegetative Growth to Plant Production in Common Bean As Deduced from a Comparative Genetic Mapping

Determinacy growth habit and accelerated flowering traits were selected during or after domestication in common bean. Both processes affect several presumed adaptive traits such as the rate of plant production. There is a close association between flowering initiation and vegetative growth; however, interactions among these two crucial developmental processes and their genetic bases remain unexplored. In this study, with the aim to establish the genetic relationships between these complex processes, a multi environment quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping approach was performed in two recombinant inbred line populations derived from inter-gene pool crosses between determinate and indeterminate genotypes. Additive and epistatic QTLs were found to regulate flowering time, vegetative growth, and rate of plant production. Moreover, the pleiotropic patterns of the identified QTLs evidenced that regions controlling time to flowering traits, directly or indirectly, are also involved in the regulation of plant production traits. Further QTL analysis highlighted one QTL, on the lower arm of the linkage group Pv01, harboring the Phvul,001G189200 gene, homologous to the Arabidopsis thaliana TERMINAL FLOWER1 (TFL1) gene, which explained up to 32% of phenotypic variation for time to flowering, 66% for vegetative growth, and 19% for rate of plant production. This finding was consistent with previous results, which have also suggested PhvuL001G189200 (PvTFL1 y) as a candidate gene for determinacy locus. The information here reported can also be applied in breeding programs seeking to optimize key agronomic traits, such as time to flowering, plant height and an improved reproductive biomass, pods, and seed size, as well as yield.