Genomic organization of Plum pox virus resistance through quantitative meta-analysis and integration with the Peach full genome sequence

The Plum pox virus (PPV), the causal agent of the sharka disease, is the most detrimental virus on stone-fruit trees, worldwide. To date, few sources of resistance have been identified and mapped or are being mapped in several apricot progenies issued from the genitors ‘Stark Early Orange’ (SEO), ‘Goldrich’, ‘Harcot’ ‘Harlayne’ and in Prunus davidiana clone P1908. However, whether those sources of resistance are distinct or not is still questionned. To answer this question, a meta-analysis of the apricot and P. davidiana resistances to PPV was performed, using Biomercator V3 software (ANR project 08GENO126). The purpose of this study was i) to integrate all PPV resistance QTL information available in the literature in a QTL meta-analysis in order to detect consensual, most probable genomic regions linked to resistance to sharka disease, ii) to compare the genomic organisation of those resistance loci in different genitors, sometimes not genetically related, iii) to integrate the QTL and meta-QTL maps with the peach full genome sequence. Indeed, BioMercator V3 offers to perform within a user-friendly graphical interface, genetic map compilation, map comparison and MetaQTL-analysis using various state-of-the-art methods from previous versions of BioMercator (Arcade, et al., 2004) and MetaQTL (Veyrieras, et al., 2007). BioMercator V3 will be available freely by early 2012 (http://moulon.inra.fr/index.php/fr/equipestransversales/atelier-de-bioinformatique/projects/74) (see computer demos).

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