20.500.12556/RUL-183210 Association-based analysis of Verticillium wilt resistance in a bi-parental hop (Humulus lupulus L.) population for marker development in breeding Verticillium wilt of hop (Humulus lupulus L.), caused by the soil-borne pathogen Verticillium nonalfalfae, is a devastating disease with no effective chemical control. In European hop-growing regions, breeding resistant cultivars is the most effective strategy. The lack of response differences in earlier studies suggests constitutive resistance. We therefore conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) using a phased hop genome assembly to improve detection of Verticillium resistance loci. A bi-parental population of 142 genotypes, derived from a cross between resistant Wye Target and susceptible BL2/1, was phenotyped for Verticillium wilt resistance and genotyped by sequencing. Association analyses with five statistical models (MLM in TASSEL 5, MLM, MLMM, FarmCPU and BLINK in GAPIT) did not identify any significant SNPs; however, several candidate loci were identified using exploratory threshold, particularly in the phase 2 genome assembly, including a wall-associated kinase (WAK) consistently detected across both genome phases and all models. GWAS results were further assessed with a Random Forest model, which identified SNPs of high feature importance and showed adequate predictive power (accuracy ≈ 0.4, correlation ≈ 0.8) for preliminary breeding screening. These findings provide an initial set of candidate markers and exploratory prediction models for Verticillium wilt resistance in hop, representing a valuable genomic resource for future marker-assisted selection and breeding strategies. hop GWAS Verticillium wilt resistance SNP marker marker-assisted selection hmelj verticilijska uvelost odpornost rastlin na bolezni molekularna genetika fenotipiziranje sekvenciranje true false true Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Članek v reviji 2026-06-08 11:47:00 2026-06-08 11:47:07 2026-06-09 04:11:43 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 0 23 str. iss. 11, art. 1667 Vol. 15 2026 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 631 2223-7747 10.3390/plants15111667 280792323 plants-15-01667.pdf plants-15-01667.pdf 1 7BCD471A502E6B1A1F03F2B0236848C0 bd7757572ae0dcabedab976cbc25853eaf609a51bc19e497a0b02c17c698daef 32cb91ea-631f-11f1-9b0d-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=235091 https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/15/11/1667 1 02319891-631f-11f1-9b0d-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=235090 Biotehniška fakulteta 0 0 0