Professor Zhang Chunyu's team from the College of Plant Science and Technology at Huazhong Agricultural University, in collaboration with professor Li Maoteng's team from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, published a research paper titled A rare dominant allele DYSOC1 determines seed coat color and improves seed oil content in Brassica napus in the journal Science Advances on Jan 4.

Through combined expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analysis and quantitative trait loci (QTL) fine mapping, the study identified and cloned a dominant yellow seed gene, DYSOC1 (dominant gene of yellow seed coat color and improved seed oil content 1), from the yellow-seeded Brassica napus line N53-2.

Phenotypic analysis of genetic offspring and transgenic progeny showed that this gene not only causes the seed coat to turn yellow but also significantly increases the oil content.

A rare dominant allele DYSOC1 determines seed coat color and improves seed oil content in Brassica napus on Science Advances. [Photo/news.hzau.edu.cn]

This is the first paper on Brassica napus published by Chinese scholars in the journal Science Advances.

Brassica napus is one of China's most important oilseed crops. However, the majority of cloned yellow seed genes so far have been recessive genes, greatly limiting the breeding of yellow-seeded varieties of Brassica napus.

This study not only provides a new genetic resource for breeding yellow-seeded Brassica napus with high oil content and low lignin content but also demonstrates the potential of multi-omics analysis combined with eQTL and QTL fine mapping techniques in genetic analysis of key agronomic traits and identification of candidate genes. It offers technical experience for future crop genetic improvement and precision breeding.