(1100-40) Wild Bean (Strophostyles sp.): An Emerging System to Understand Phenotypic and Genotypic Mechanisms Underlying Local Environmental Adaptation
Graduate Student University of North Carolina at Charlotte Kannapolis, North Carolina
Body of Abstract: Wild bean (Strophostyles helvola), also known as sand bean, is a flowering legume species native to eastern North America that is a close, wild relative of the widely cultivated common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Unlike its domesticated relative, sand bean can readily grow in sandy soils characterized by higher salinity and more arid conditions as well as under moist, lower salinity conditions. This adaptability by local populations makes sand bean an attractive model system to better understand phenotypic and genetic mechanisms of abiotic stress tolerance and evolutionary relationships among populations ranging in geographical region and environmental conditions. Here, under controlled conditions, we investigated multiple phenotypic traits (plant growth, leaf trichome density, seed traits) in both inland and beach-adapted sand bean populations originating from northern and southern states in the U.S. to help understand the relationship between sand bean population similarity based on geographical region (northern or southern) and environment (inland or beach-adapted). Our findings identified multiple significant differences between sand bean plants from the most northern and southern locations which may suggest that geographical region plays a larger role in shaping differences in phenotypic traits among plant populations than the local environment. Additionally, we plan to conduct DNA sequence analysis to provide greater insight into the genotypic relationships and differences responsible for the phenotypic patterns we observed across northern and southern-located sand bean populations in our current study. Further expansion of this work will aim to incorporate a broader range of northern/southern populations across beach/inland environments to build a more comprehensive understanding of the phenotypic and genotypic mechanisms that shape sand bean stress tolerance, climate adaptation, and evolutionary patterns.