Origin and de novo domestication of sweet orange.
- 2025-03
- Nature genetics 57(3)
- Shengjun Liu
- Yuantao Xu
- Kun Yang
- Yue Huang
- Zhihao Lu
- Shulin Chen
- Xiang Gao
- Gongao Xiao
- Peng Chen
- Xiuli Zeng
- Lun Wang
- Weikang Zheng
- Zishuang Liu
- Guanglian Liao
- Fa He
- Junjie Liu
- Pengfei Wan
- Fang Ding
- Junli Ye
- Wenbiao Jiao
- Lijun Chai
- Zhiyong Pan
- Fei Zhang
- Zongcheng Lin
- Yanjun Zan
- Wenwu Guo
- Robert M Larkin
- Zongzhou Xie
- Xia Wang
- Xiuxin Deng
- Qiang Xu
- PubMed: 40045092
- DOI: 10.1038/s41588-025-02122-4
Study Design
- Methods
- Sequenced 226 citrus accessions, assembled telomere-to-telomere phased diploid genomes, performed artificial hybridization experiments
- Funding
- Unclear
Sweet orange is cultivated worldwide but suffers from various devastating diseases because of its monogenetic background. The elucidation of the origin of a crop facilitates the domestication of new crops that may better cope with new challenges. Here we collected and sequenced 226 citrus accessions and assembled telomere-to-telomere phased diploid genomes of sweet orange and sour orange. On the basis of a high-resolution haplotype-resolved genome analysis, we inferred that sweet orange originated from a sour orange × mandarin cross and confirmed this model using artificial hybridization experiments. We identified defense-related metabolites that potently inhibited the growth of multiple industrially important pathogenic bacteria. We introduced diversity to sweet orange, which showed wide segregation in fruit flavor and disease resistance and produced canker-resistant sweet orange by selecting defense-related metabolites. Our findings elucidate the origin of sweet orange and de novo domesticated disease-resistant sweet oranges, illuminating a strategy for the rapid domestication of perennial crops.