Resequencing of 31 wild and cultivated soybean genomes identifies patterns of genetic diversity and selection

Jun Wang and colleagues report whole-genome resequencing of 17 wild and 14 cultivated soybean accessions. They characterize population structure, patterns of linkage disequilibrium and selection in soybeans. We report a large-scale analysis of the patterns of genome-wide genetic variation in soybeans. We re-sequenced a total of 17 wild and 14 cultivated soybean genomes to an average of approximately ×5 depth and >90% coverage using the Illumina Genome Analyzer II platform. We compared the patterns of genetic variation between wild and cultivated soybeans and identified higher allelic diversity in wild soybeans. We identified a high level of linkage disequilibrium in the soybean genome, suggesting that marker-assisted breeding of soybean will be less challenging than map-based cloning. We report linkage disequilibrium block location and distribution, and we identified a set of 205,614 tag SNPs that may be useful for QTL mapping and association studies. The data here provide a valuable resource for the analysis of wild soybeans and to facilitate future breeding and quantitative trait analysis.