Metabolite database for root, tuber, and banana crops to facilitate modern breeding in understudied crops

Abstract

Roots, tubers, and bananas (RTB) are vital staples for food security in the world’s poorest nations. A majorconstraint to current RTB breeding programmes is limited knowledge on the available diversity due to lackof efficient germplasm characterization and structure. In recent years large-scale efforts have begun to eluci-date the genetic and phenotypic diversity of germplasm collections and populations and, yet, biochemicalmeasurements have often been overlooked despite metabolite composition being directly associated withagronomic and consumer traits. Here we present a compound database and concentration range formetabolites detected in the major RTB crops: banana (Musaspp.), cassava (Manihot esculenta), potato(Solanum tuberosum), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), and yam (Dioscoreaspp.), following metabolomics-based diversity screening of global collections held within the CGIAR institutes. The dataset including 711chemical features provides a valuable resource regarding the comparative biochemical composition of eachRTB crop and highlights the potential diversity available for incorporation into crop improvement pro-grammes. Particularly, the tropical crops cassava, sweet potato and banana displayed more complex com-positional metabolite profiles with representations of up to 22 chemical classes (unknowns excluded) thanthat of potato, for which only metabolites from 10 chemical classes were detected. Additionally, over 20%of biochemical signatures remained unidentified for every crop analyzed. Integration of metabolomics withthe on-going genomic and phenotypic studies will enhance ’omics-wide associations of molecular signa-tures with agronomic and consumer traits via easily quantifiable biochemical markers to aid gene discoveryand functional characterization.