Chinese and foreign scientists draw a sketch of adzuki bean genome

??? Chinese and foreign scientists reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the 12th that they had sketched the genome of adzuki bean. This will help to analyze the characteristics of adzuki bean at the genetic level and cultivate more new varieties of adzuki bean.

Researchers from Beijing Agricultural University and the International semi-Arid Tropical crop Research Institute have used the second generation sequencing technology to sequence the whole genome of adzuki bean and assembled a high-quality frame map of the adzuki bean genome. the results show that adzuki bean has more than 34000 genes. The researchers also analyzed the evolutionary relationship between the genomes of adzuki beans and other known legumes, and the results showed that adzuki beans were closely related to kidney beans.

The researchers sequenced and analyzed the genes of 49 wild adzuki bean, semi-wild adzuki bean and cultivated adzuki bean, and confirmed that the relationship between semi-wild adzuki bean and cultivated adzuki bean is close to that of wild adzuki bean, indicating that semi-wild adzuki bean is the initial farm variety in the process of domestication of adzuki bean.

Adzuki bean is different from other legume crops such as soybeans, the fat content is very low, the average is only 0.59%, while the total starch content is higher, the average is 57.06%. By comparison, the soybean starch content is 25.3%, while the fat content is as high as 22.5%. New studies have shown that these differences are caused by differences in the transcriptional levels of related genes.

Professor Wan Ping of Beijing Agricultural College, one of the leaders of the study, told Xinhua that "adzuki bean is a traditional Chinese miscellaneous grain and its research foundation is weak." Through genome sequencing, assembly and gene annotation, we will promote the identification, cloning and molecular breeding of genes for important agronomic traits of adzuki bean, improve the research level of adzuki bean in China, and accelerate the genetic improvement of adzuki bean. "

Wan Ping, Ling Hongqing of the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wang Jun of the Huada Institute of Genomics and Rajiv Walshni of the International semi-Arid Tropical crop Research Institute were the co-authors of the study.

Adzuki bean is commonly known as red adzuki bean, red bean and so on. It originated in China and was domesticated as early as 12000 years ago. Adzuki bean is an ideal nutritious food with high protein, low fat and tonifying blood, in which the content of 8 kinds of amino acids necessary for human body is 2 to 3 times higher than that of cereal crops. rich in B vitamins, iron, calcium and other minerals and terpenoids, isoflavones, saponins and other bioactive substances. Modern medical research has found that adzuki bean has the effects of reducing blood sugar, lowering blood lipids, losing weight and anti-cancer.

China is the world's largest producer and exporter of adzuki beans, accounting for about 80% of the world's exports, and its products are sold to more than 30 countries and regions in the world.