Sodium azide mutagenesis resulted in a peanut plant with elevated oleate content

Chuan Tang Wang*¹ · Yue Yi Tang¹ · Xiu Zhen Wang¹ · Shu Wei Zhang² · Gui Jie Li¹ · Jian Cheng Zhang¹ · Shan Lin Yu^*1

¹Shandong Peanut Research Institute, Qingdao, China
²Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an, China

*Corresponding authors: chinapeanut@126.com; yichuanyuzhongxue@126.com

Financial support: The authors thank support from the earmarked fund for Modern Agro-industry Technology Research System (MATRS) Peanut Program (Grant No. nycytx-19), Ministry of Agriculture, China, 863 New and High Technology Project (Grant No. 2006AA10A114), Qingdao Science & Technology Support Program (Grant No. 10-3-3-20-nsh), Shandong Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. Y2008D11), and Shandong Key Project of Science & Technology (Grant No.2009GG10009008).

Keywords: chemical mutant, FAD2B, NIRS, oleate, peanut.

Screening of peanut seeds resulting from 0.39% sodium azide treatment with NIRS calibration equation for bulk seed samples identified a plant with more than 60% oleate. Oleate content in individual seeds of the plant, as predicted by NIRS calibration equation for intact single peanut seeds, ranged from 50.05% ~ 68.69%. Three seeds with >60% oleate thus identified were further confirmed by gas chromatography. Multiple sequence alignments of the FAD2B gene from Huayu 22 (wild type) and peanut seeds with elevated oleate (mutant type) revealed a C281T transition in the coding region causing an I94T substitution in the oleoyl-PC desaturase, which may be responsible for reduction in the enzyme activity.