Genomic basis of drought resistance inFagus sylvatica

In the course of global climate change, central Europe is experiencing more frequent and prolonged periods of drought. These drought events have severe and detrimental impacts on the forest ecosystem. The drought years 2018 and 2019 affected European beeches (Fagus sylvatica L.) in noticeably different ways: even in the same local stand, badly drought damaged trees immediately neighboured apparently healthy trees. This led to the hypothesis that the genotype rather than the environment was responsible for this conspicuous pattern. We used this natural experiment to study the genomic basis of drought resistance in a Pool-GWAS approach. Contrasting the extreme phenotypes, we identified 106 si…

Author response: Genomic basis for drought resistance in European beech forests threatened by climate change