1. Introduction
Soybean (
Glycine max L. Merr.) is widely recognized as the richest and least expensive source of vegetable protein for livestock, poultry and aquaculture production, which is also used as a source of metabolizable energy (
http://soystats.com, date: 18 December 2020). However, soybean seeds have several anti-nutritional factors (ANFs) that affect animal nutrient digestion and absorption, reducing animal growth performance in meat production [
1]. The main ANFs in the soybean seeds include proteinase inhibitors, metal chelates, oligosaccharides and antigenic factors. Although the meal industry has established solutions, such as roasting that is applied on raw soybean meal to inactive ANFs, heating can degrade certain essential amino acids, and the feed cost becomes higher due to higher energy cost [
2]. Therefore, the most economical and reliable way to improve animals’ ability to digest protein is to feed them with soybean meals containing low concentration of ANFs.
Trypsin inhibitor (TI), one of the ANFs in soybeans, is the major proteinase inhibitor accounting for about 6% of the total protein in soybean seed [
3]. TI restrains the activity of a protein-digesting enzyme called trypsin, causing pancreatic hypertrophy/hyperplasia, which ultimately results in an inhibition of animal growth [
4]. Trypsin inhibitor in soybean seeds includes two class families, Kunitz TI (KTI, 21 KDa) which is sensitive to thermal treatment and has specificity for trypsin, and Bowman–Birk TI (BBTI, 7–8 KDa), which is more thermo-stable, capable to inhibit trypsin and chymotrypsin [
5,
6]. Among these two types of TI, KTI serves as the major contributor to the trypsin inhibitor activity in soybeans. KTI is encoded by a gene family containing more than 10 independent genes [
7]. Only two KTI genes (KTI3 and GMKTI-1) are sequenced and mapped on chromosome 8 (NCBI.gov, accessed in April 13 2020). KTI3 is the major contributor of the KTI phenotype and is expressed in the soybean seeds [
8]. Wang et al. (2011) reported 13 iso-forms of KTI, which are governed by a single gene with multiple alleles [
9]. BBTI family in soybean encompass many genes having smaller impacts on the TI phenotype.
Two accessions were originally identified from the USDA’s Germplasm collection: PI 157,440 (‘Kin-du’) and PI 196168, completely lacking the Kunitz trypsin inhibitor protein [
10] and both were shown to have a frameshift mutation in the KTI3 gene (
kti) [
7,
11]. Despite this mutation, a wide range in trypsin inhibitor activity is observed among germplasm containing either wild type KTI3 or null kti3 allele [
12,
13] due to a significant proteome rebalancing in KTI mutant lines, resulting in an increased BBTI protein levels [
14]. Additionally, both Kunitz and Bowman–Birk trypsin inhibitor classes are influenced by the environment, creating a challenge in breeding selections [
12,
13,
15]. The breeding effort of low TI or TI-free activity seemed very slow [
16,
17] after ‘Kunitz’ variety, with PI 157,440 as the KTI free donor, was released in the 1970′s, probably because of the establishment of commercial soybean meal processing. Additionally, soybean breeders’ efforts have been focusing on the improvement of productivity characteristics of soybeans such as yield, resistance to disease as well as seed composition such as high protein and high oil concentration. Breeding soybeans for low trypsin inhibitors could potentially replace heat treatment to remove trypsin inhibitor and overcome the problem of reducing nutritional value of soybean meal after heating.
The use of molecular markers for marker-assisted selection (MAS) have been proved to speed up the breeding process and efficiently introgress recessive alleles into crops [
18,
19,
20]. Up to date, previous studies on the development of low KTI soybean cultivars reported the use of SSR markers as tool for breeding selection [
21,
22,
23,
24,
25]. SSR markers in Chr 08 such as SSR 228, SSR 409 and SSR 429 were reported to be closely linked (0–10 cM) to
ktiti, the recessive form of
KTi gene [
24]. However, SSRs are generally abundant and polymorphic in non-expressed genomic regions and consequently considered to be selectively neutral. In recent years, SNP markers have started to replace SSRs in population genetic studies as well as in a wide range of other applications [
26,
27]. SNPs occur in genomes at a much higher frequency than SSRs, but they also occur in intergenic and non-coding regions. However, genome-wide association studies revealed that SNPs located in non-coding regions are often physically linked to functional or regulatory genomic sites, thus reflecting, for example, selection signatures [
28]. Moreover, SNP markers are highly stable and can be genotyped in high-throughput systems with a high multiplex ratio such as the PCR-based Competitive Allele Specific technology (KASPar) that is simpler and more cost-effective than other SNP assays.
In a recent article, Patil et al. (2017) reported a development of a SNP genotyping assay for detection of low KTI in soybean in an F2 population of SP6A-206 x PI 542,044 (low KTI). However, Patil et al. did not report what phenotyping system they used to discriminate the low KTI lines from the high ones, making not clear if the KASP clustering correspond to true low and high KTI phenotypes. Moreover, we tested the reported SNP genotyping assay in the Glenn (high KTI) x PI 547,656 (low KTI) population with no successful results, perhaps because PI 542,044 and PI 547,656 do not have common low KTI genes. In 2018, Rosso et al. developed an HPLC method as a reliable method to quantify KTI in soybean seeds. showing that this quantification method was strongly correlated with two popular activity assays for measuring total TI activity. Additionally, the HPLC method overcomes the flaws of activity assays because it can detect low levels of KTI on nonfunctional mutated soybean lines, which is impossible for activity assays, and can measure only KTI, not the mixture of KTI and BBTI as activity assays do. Therefore, the objectives of this study were: (i) to identify SNP markers associated with the QTL that confers low KTI in soybean seeds; and (ii) to develop and validate a breeder -friendly KASP SNP genotyping assay linked to low KTI content derived from ‘Kin-du’ as the KTI free donor, that could be used in marker-assisted selection to incorporate the low KTI trait into elite breeding lines.
3. Discussion
The presence of Kunitz trypsin inhibitor (KTI) in soybean seeds has a negative impact on the feed and food industry since it affects animal nutrient digestion and absorption, reducing animal growth performance in meat production [
4]. The best cost-efficient way to overcome this problem would be to use soybean cultivars with low or null KTI content. In an effort to develop soybean cultivars with low KTI content, we crossed the soybean cultivar Glenn (normal KTI content of 12.63 mg/g) with the low KTI PI 547,656 (1.38 mg/g) that carries the low KTI allele in 2014. The biparental population of 200 F
3:5 lines presented a wide range of KTI content (0.5–24.14 mg/g) (
Figure 5). We estimated that
H2 for KTI content as 0.54, which is considered a medium heritability [
30]. A moderate broad-sense heritability and significant difference of KTI content between years and locations (
Table 3 and
Table 4) showed that genetic and environment affect this trait. Vollmann et al. (2003) also reported that KTI activity in soybean was significantly affected by the environment and genotype. Thus, the use of molecular markers would play an important role to incorporate the low KTI trait into elite breeding lines. Molecular marker-based selection paired with phenotypic selection is an efficient way to advance breeding lines with the desirable trait, plus selective elimination of undesirable traits, in the shortest possible time. Microsatellite markers, such as Satt 228, Satt 409 and Satt 429 have been previously used when breeding for low or null KTI content [
24,
31,
32], however, single nucleotide polymorphism markers have gained importance in the breeding programs due to their large amount on the genome, high cost efficiency, and high repeatability.
This study confirms the presence of a QTL on Chromosome 8 (LG A2) associated with low concentration of KTI previously reported. In this study, one QTL (
qKTI08) associated with KTI was detected in PI 547,656 on chromosome 8 with a confidence interval from Gm08: 44,814,503 to Gm08:45270892 (
Figure 2). This QTL is desired for marker-assisted selection due to its stability across years and locations. As today, there are five published genes in this region, two calcineurin
B-like protein, two heat shock cognate protein and one proliferating cell nuclear antigen [
33]. However, close to this region, between Gm08_45730511 and Gm08_45786029 SNP markers, seven Kunitz trypsin inhibitor proteins have been identified, including KTI3 [
34,
35]. Therefore, chromosome 8 harbors several genes associated with Kunitz trypsin inhibitors. Moreover, previously published SSR markers used for breeding low TI lines [
24,
25,
31,
32] are also found close to this QTL, between region Gm08:46124977 to Gm08:47218108.
We found five SNP markers closely associated (
p < 0.0001) with low KTI content across years and locations (
Table 7). Three out of these five SNP markers were converted to KASP assays and use for validation on the genetically diverse 93 PIs. Gm08_44814503 KASP SNP assay was able to select 86% of the low KTI PIs from the validation panel. This SNP marker will be more useful in MAS than previously developed assay by Patil et al., 2017, since our was validated in 93 plant introductions that have much more diverse genetic background than Kin-du alone as the low KTI donor. The SNP assay previously developed by Patil et al., 2017 for low KTI was based on a mutation on PI 157,740 [
7], however they only tested this assay on an F
2 population derived from SP6A-209 x PI 542,044 lines, where PI 542,044 is a germplasm with null KTI. The validated KASP assay proposed in this work offers a rapid and more economical genotyping assay compared to previous assays [
36,
37] in practical applications such as MAS backcrossing, advance breeding lines, and germplasm identification. Moreover, KASP assays has been proven to work very well for many traits in the soybean genome [
38].
Current published TI activity assays can only test total TI activity, but cannot differentiate KTI or BBTI activity. Therefore, we focused on KTI content in this study. However, breeding only for low or null KTI content in soybean would not be sufficient for practical applications for a few reasons, such as the effect of environmental conditions on the trait, the interaction of environment and genotype, the expression of one of the 13 iso-forms of
KTI3 gene in the seeds and presence of Bowman–Birk TI affect the TI activity in soybean seeds. Gillman et al. indicated that low KTI lines had dramatically increased Bowman–Birk TI level [
14]. Therefore, the practical and effective approach for expanding the soybean meal value for the poultry industry is to reduce both KTI and BBTI content in soybean. The implementation of low total TI into breeding lines would reduce the need of postharvest heat treatment, which will bring benefits to the soybean feed and food processing industry.
In conclusion, this study successfully mapped the QTL on chromosome 8 linked to KTI content that was previously published and developed a robust, cost-effective and high-throughput SNP assay that could be applied across different genetic backgrounds in soybean breeding programs to facilitate marker-assisted selection for low KTI content in soybean seeds with great efficiency and accuracy. The KASPar KTI assay is a breeder-friendly SNP detection system for selection of low KTI soybean lines since KASPar assay samples are amplified with a standard thermal cycler and can be genotyped with any type of FRET reader, which can easily be done by many breeding programs. Future work will focus on the identification of QTLs and SNP markers to select soybean breeding lines low in BBTI content as well, as double null will have a stronger application to the feed and food industry.