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Management and distribution of experimental data from prebreeding projects is important to ensure uptake of germplasm into breeding and research programs. Being able to access and share this data in standard formats is essential. The adoption of a common informatics platform for crops that may have limited resources brings economies of scale, allowing common informatics components to be used across multiple species. The close integration of such a platform with commonly used breeding software, visualization, and analysis tools reduces the barrier for entry to researchers and provides a common framework to facilitate collaborations and data sharing. This work presents significant updates to the Germinate platform and highlights its value in distributing prebreeding data for 14 crops as part of the project ‘Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives’ (hereafter Crop Trust Crop Wild Relatives project) led by the Crop Trust (https://www.cwrdiversity.org). The addition of data on these species compliments data already publicly available in Germinate. We present a suite of updated Germinate features using examples from these crop species and their wild relatives. The use of Germinate within the Crop TrustCropWildRelatives project demonstrates the usefulness of the system and the benefits a shared informatics platform provides. These data resources provide a foundation on which breeding and research communities can develop additional online resources for their crops, harness new data as it becomes available, and benefit collectively from future developments of the Germinate platform.

Multi-parent advanced generation inter-cross (MAGIC) populations are an emerging type of resource for dissecting the genetic structure of traits and improving breeding populations. We developed a MAGIC population for cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp.) from eight founder parents. These founders were genetically diverse and carried many abiotic and biotic stress resistance, seed quality and agronomic traits relevant to cowpea improvement in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa, where cowpea is vitally important in the human diet and local economies. The eight parents were inter-crossed using structured matings to ensure that the population would have balanced representation from each parent, followed by single-seed descent, resulting in 305 F8 recombinant inbred lines each carrying a mosaic of genome blocks contributed by all founders. This was confirmed by single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping with the Illumina Cowpea Consortium Array. These lines were on average 99.74% homozygous but also diverse in agronomic traits across environments. Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) were identified for several parental traits. Loci with major effects on photoperiod sensitivity and seed size were also verified by biparental genetic mapping. The recombination events were concentrated in telomeric regions. Due to its broad genetic base, this cowpea MAGIC population promises breakthroughs in genetic gain, QTL and gene discovery, enhancement of breeding populations and, for some lines, direct releases as new varieties.

Vigna vexillata is a wild cross-incompatible relative of cowpea. It is highly resistant to several diseases and pests plaguing cowpea. A linkage map was developed for V. vexillata comprising 120 markers, including 70 random amplified polymorphic DNAs, 47 amplified fragment length polymorphisms, one simple sequence repeat and two morphological traits namely, the cowpea mottle carmovirus resistance locus (CPMoV) and leaf shape (La), utilizing an F 2 generation of the intra-specific cross 'Tvnu 1443' × 'Tvnu 73'. The genetic map comprised 14 linkage groups spanning 1564.1 cM of the genome. Thirty-nine quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with nine traits were detected on the linkage map, explaining between 15.62 and 66.58% of their phenotypic variation. Seven chromosomal intervals contained QTLs with effects on multiple traits.

Cowpea mottle carmovirus (CPMoV) causes grain yield losses of up to 75% in cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp.). There is no resistance to this virus among cultivated cowpea lines, but a high level of resistance exists in Vigna vexillata, a wild Vigna species. Fifty-four accessions of V. vexillata germplasm collection at IITA were tested for resistance to CPMoV. Seedlings were mechanically inoculated with the virus and susceptibility or resistance was assessed by visual scoring of disease symptoms and serological analysis using antigen-coated plate enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ACP-ELISA). All but three V. vexillata lines belonging to the variety angustifolia were resistant to CPMoV. Crosses were made between two resistant V. vexillata lines and the three susceptible lines. Segregation patterns observed in the F2 and the backcross populations of all the crosses showed that resistance to CPMoV in V. vexillata is controlled by a single dominant gene, and the level of resistance conferred by this gene in V. vexillata is very high.

Cowpea [Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.] is a major tropical legume crop grown in warm to hot areas throughout the world and especially important to the people of sub-Saharan Africa where the crop was domesticated. To date, relatively little is understood about its domestication origins and patterns of genetic variation. In this study, a worldwide collection of cowpea landraces and African ancestral wild cowpea was genotyped with more than 1200 single nucleotide polymorphism markers. Bayesian inference revealed the presence of two major gene pools in cultivated cowpea in Africa. Landraces from gene pool 1 are mostly distributed in western Africa while the majority of gene pool 2 are located in eastern Africa. Each gene pool is most closely related to wild cowpea in the same geographic region, indicating divergent domestication processes leading to the formation of two gene pools. The total genetic variation within landraces from countries outside Africa was slightly greater than within African landraces. Accessions from Asia and Europe were more related to those from western Africa while accessions from the Americas appeared more closely related to those from eastern Africa. This delineation of cowpea germplasm into groups of genetic relatedness will be valuable for guiding introgression efforts in breeding programs and for improving the efficiency of germplasm management.