Fig. 1: Identification of the ef1 gene by map-based cloning.

a Phenotype of whole plants and flowers of HX3 and ef1 under short-day conditions. ef1 showed early flowering compared with HX3. White arrow, magnified view. Scale bars, 10 cm. b The flowering time of HX3 and ef1 under SD (11 h/13 h) and LD (15 h/9 h) conditions. c The maturity time of HX3 and ef1 in the field conditions of Guangzhou (Summer). d Flowering time of HX3 and ef1 relative to sowing dates throughout the year in field conditions. e Frequency distributions of flowering time in the F₂ progeny of a cross between HX3 and ef1 under field conditions. f SNP-index distribution along chromosomes. Red regression lines were obtained by averaging SNP indices from a moving window of five consecutive SNPs and shifting the window 200 kb at a time. The Y-axis value of each average SNP index was set at a midpoint between the first and fifth SNP. g Fine mapping of ef1 using an F₂ population from LNHM (a landrace form Guangdong) × ef1 candidate gene. Numbers of recombination refer to the number of heterozygous plants at a physical location. The candidate region was located in an 860 kb region spanned by SNP2 and SNP4, in which only Glyma.06G250100 harbors a deletion according to resequencing. The red square indicates ef1 has a single-nucleotide deletion at this site. ATG is the start codon; TAA is the stop codon; UTR untranslated region, CDS coding sequence. h Comparison of AtLDL2 and GmLDL2. Pink and gray squares represent the SWRIM and amine oxidase domains, respectively. Data represent means ± SD (n = 10 plants) in (b–d). The P value was generated from a two-sided Student’s t-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.