The curious case of sporadic nematode susceptibility in “Tifguard” peanut ( Arachis hypogaea ): seed mixture or genetic instability?

Abstract The Runner-type peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) cultivar “Tifguard” carries an introgressed chromosomal segment on chromosome A09 from A. cardenasii that confers resistance to root-knot nematode (RKN). Despite this, a proportion of “Tifguard” plants show RKN symptoms, which could plausibly be attributed to seed mixture or outcrossing. However, recent work has shown that cultivated peanut exhibits surprisingly frequent large-scale chromosomal instability (1% to 5%); suggesting that resistance loss could arise from spontaneous structural genomic change. To test these possibilities, we grew foundation seed in an RKN-infested field and collected symptomatic and asymptomatic plants. Lineages derived by single-seed descent were genotyped using the Axiom Arachis 48K SNP array v2 and whole-genome sequencing. Symptomatic lineages lacked the A. cardenasii introgression on chromosome A09 and instead carried the complete endogenous A. hypogaea A09 region at the expected dosage. There was no evidence of large-scale homoeologous exchange, deletion, or other genomic instability affecting this chromosome. Most susceptible plants were closely related to resistant “Tifguard” but lacked the A09 introgression, with a smaller proportion assignable to known nematode-susceptible cultivars, implicating seed mixture with a possible contribution from cross-pollination rather than genomic instability. Because resistance depends on a single major-effect segment, rare events have disproportionate phenotypic impact, placing high demands on genetic purity. For important traits conferred by major loci, marker-based testing across seed-increase stages could verify trait retention directly, and is increasingly practical as marker costs decline.