Where does lychee come from?

"When a concubine of Hongchen laughs, no one knows that it is lychee

On January 4, "Nature Genetics" published the research results of the lychee genome project led by researcher Li Jianguo and professor Hu Guibing of South China Agricultural University

Lizheng Litchi originated in Yunnan, my country

The lychee fruit, which is loved by thousands of people, has a cultivation record in China dating back to more than 2,300 years ago

However, there are also many controversies surrounding lychees: some people say that its birthplace is not in Yunnan, China; farmers think that its large and small annual results are outstanding, resulting in unstable supply chains; scientists say that it lacks genome sequence information, which restricts the depth of basic research

"Compared with other bulk fruits such as citrus, apple, and peach, lychee has a big gap in basic research level, and its breeding technology is backward

Twelve years ago, the research team of Li Jianguo, a researcher at the School of Horticulture at South China Agricultural University, decided to decipher the lychee genome code and uncover the veil of its origin and domestication

The scientific research team selected Feizixiao from many lychees as the research object, "because it is the main cultivar with the widest cultivation range, the highest yield and the longest fresh fruit sales period in China,

"To our surprise, the heterozygosity of Feizixiao's genome was as high as 2.

Finally, the research team used 72 resequencing data of litchi resources to identify high-quality SNPs and put forward the hypothesis of "one origin center, two independent domestication events" for litchi

"Yunnan is the origin center of wild lychees, which spread along the Xijiang River and formed a major habitat for wild lychees in Hainan; since then, Yunnan and Hainan wild lychees have been independently domesticated into extra-early and late-maturing varieties, extra-early-maturing varieties and late-maturing varieties, respectively.

It is expected to solve the problem of short production period of lychees

While solving the major problem of "where do I come from" in lychees, the scientific research team also unlocked the regulation mechanism of high concentration of lychee fresh fruits during the ripening period, short fresh-keeping period and severe seasonal excess

Fresh lychee fruit is mainly on the market from May to July, which is relatively concentrated

In their research, they systematically studied the regulatory mechanism of lychee flowering at the genomic level, and found that the deletion of a specific DNA sequence in lychee may be an important factor leading to the formation of different flowering stages of lychee

"Blooming and maturity are the most important characteristics of lychee varieties