Almond is appreciated for its nutraceutical value and for the aromatic profile of the kernels. In this work, an almond collection composed of 96 Sicilian accessions complemented with 10 widely cultivated cultivars was phenotyped for the production of volatile organic compounds using a proton-transfer time-of-flight mass spectrometer and genotyped using the Illumina Infinium®18 K Peach SNP array. The profiling of the aroma was carried out on fresh and roasted kernels enabling the detection of 150 mass peaks. Sixty eight, for the most related with sulfur compounds, furan containing compounds, and aldehydes formed by Strecker degradation, significantly increased during roasting, while the concentration of fifty-four mass peaks, for the most belonging to alcohols and terpenes, significantly decreased. Four hundred and seventy-one robust SNPs were selected and employed for population genetic studies. Structure analysis detected three subpopulations with the Sicilian accessions characterized by a different genetic stratification compared to those collected in Apulia (South Italy) and the International cultivars. The linkage-disequilibrium (LD) decay across the genome was equal to r2 = 0.083. Furthermore, a high level of collinearity (r2 = 0.96) between almond and peach was registered confirming the high synteny between the two genomes. A preliminary application of a genome-wide association analysis allowed the detection of significant marker-trait associations for 31 fresh and 33 roasted almond mass peaks respectively. An accurate genetic and phenotypic characterization of novel germplasm can represent a valuable tool for the set-up of marker-assisted selection of novel cultivars with an enhanced aromatic profile.

中文翻译：

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杏仁种质收集的遗传特征和生和烤仁的挥发物分析

杏仁因其营养价值和果仁的芳香特征而备受赞誉。在这项工作中，使用质子转移飞行时间质谱仪对由 96 个西西里种质和 10 个广泛栽培品种组成的杏仁集合进行表型分析，以生产挥发性有机化合物，并使用 Illumina Infinium 进行基因分型。®18 K Peach SNP 阵列。对新鲜和烘烤过的谷粒进行香气分析，可以检测到 150 个质量峰。68个，与硫化合物、含呋喃化合物和Strecker降解形成的醛类最相关，在焙烧过程中显着增加，而54个质量峰的浓度，以醇类和萜类最多，显着降低。选择了 471 个稳健的 SNP 并将其用于群体遗传研究。结构分析检测到三个具有西西里种质的亚群，其特征与在普利亚（意大利南部）和国际栽培品种中收集的亚群相比具有不同的遗传分层特征。整个基因组的连锁不平衡（LD）衰减等于r2= 0.083。此外，高度共线性（r2= 0.96）在杏仁和桃子之间进行了登记，证实了两个基因组之间的高同线性。全基因组关联分析的初步应用允许分别检测 31 个新鲜杏仁和 33 个烤杏仁质量峰的显着标记-性状关联。新种质的准确遗传和表型表征可以作为一种有价值的工具，用于建立具有增强芳香特征的新品种的标记辅助选择。