The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Elucidating the genomics of nutritional and morphological traits in watercress (Nasturtium officinale R. Br.): The first genomic resources

Elucidating the genomics of nutritional and morphological traits in watercress (Nasturtium officinale R. Br.): The first genomic resources
Elucidating the genomics of nutritional and morphological traits in watercress (Nasturtium officinale R. Br.): The first genomic resources
Watercress (Nasturtium officinale R. Br.; Brassicaceae) has a long history of human use for medicine and consumption. In recent years, it has received a large deal of attention as one of the most nutrient-dense foods. Despite this, watercress remains largely underdeveloped with limited breeding resources through which to meet current and future intensifying market demands, such as for a more compact morphology, enhanced nutritional benefits and resource-use efficiency. The aim of this PhD has been to characterize the genetic structure of nutritional and morphological traits in watercress and develop molecular breeding tools that will inform and facilitate future work on this crop. To this end, Chapter 1 provides an overview of pre-existing knowledge on watercress and reviews the opportunities offered by Next Generation Sequencing tools for undeveloped crops. Chapter 2 describes the application of RNASeq towards de novo assembly and functional annotation the watercress transcriptome for the first time. Differential expression analysis resulted in a catalogue of significant genes for antioxidant capacity and glucosinolate content in watercress and identified orthologs to known phenylpropanoid and glucosinolate biosynthetic pathway genes. In Chapter 3, the first genetic linkage map and QTL analysis were completed for this crop, utilizing Genotyping-By-Sequencing for marker discovery. In a novel undertaking to identify QTL for chemopreventive qualities in a plant genome, the toxicity of watercress to human cancer cells was mapped successfully explaining 20 % of variation in this trait. As the development of new cultivars remains central to this work, Chapter 4 reports on the first commercial trials of the new ‘Boldrewood’ accession, aimed at informing its commercialization process. Excitingly, this study also highlighted previously unknown trends in phytonutrient character of the crops across a temporal gradient, which suggests the potential for increasing consumer health benefit by alternations to crop management practices. The sum of this work has resulted in significant advances in the understanding of watercress genetics and genomics and the production of valuable resources for its future preservation and advancement.
University of Southampton
Voutsina, Nikol
68a57328-0a4b-4f72-a17d-d3e77f7240f7
Voutsina, Nikol
68a57328-0a4b-4f72-a17d-d3e77f7240f7
Taylor, Gail
Chapman, Mark
8bac4a92-bfa7-4c3c-af29-9af852ef6383

Voutsina, Nikol (2017) Elucidating the genomics of nutritional and morphological traits in watercress (Nasturtium officinale R. Br.): The first genomic resources. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis, 322pp.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

Watercress (Nasturtium officinale R. Br.; Brassicaceae) has a long history of human use for medicine and consumption. In recent years, it has received a large deal of attention as one of the most nutrient-dense foods. Despite this, watercress remains largely underdeveloped with limited breeding resources through which to meet current and future intensifying market demands, such as for a more compact morphology, enhanced nutritional benefits and resource-use efficiency. The aim of this PhD has been to characterize the genetic structure of nutritional and morphological traits in watercress and develop molecular breeding tools that will inform and facilitate future work on this crop. To this end, Chapter 1 provides an overview of pre-existing knowledge on watercress and reviews the opportunities offered by Next Generation Sequencing tools for undeveloped crops. Chapter 2 describes the application of RNASeq towards de novo assembly and functional annotation the watercress transcriptome for the first time. Differential expression analysis resulted in a catalogue of significant genes for antioxidant capacity and glucosinolate content in watercress and identified orthologs to known phenylpropanoid and glucosinolate biosynthetic pathway genes. In Chapter 3, the first genetic linkage map and QTL analysis were completed for this crop, utilizing Genotyping-By-Sequencing for marker discovery. In a novel undertaking to identify QTL for chemopreventive qualities in a plant genome, the toxicity of watercress to human cancer cells was mapped successfully explaining 20 % of variation in this trait. As the development of new cultivars remains central to this work, Chapter 4 reports on the first commercial trials of the new ‘Boldrewood’ accession, aimed at informing its commercialization process. Excitingly, this study also highlighted previously unknown trends in phytonutrient character of the crops across a temporal gradient, which suggests the potential for increasing consumer health benefit by alternations to crop management practices. The sum of this work has resulted in significant advances in the understanding of watercress genetics and genomics and the production of valuable resources for its future preservation and advancement.

Text
N Voutsina PhD Thesis - Version of Record
Available under License University of Southampton Thesis Licence.
Download (6MB)

More information

Published date: 30 November 2017

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 425884
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/425884
PURE UUID: 23750687-aa07-4feb-8e79-597d3dc1b054
ORCID for Mark Chapman: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7151-723X

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 06 Nov 2018 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 07:15

Export record

Contributors

Author: Nikol Voutsina
Thesis advisor: Gail Taylor
Thesis advisor: Mark Chapman ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×