Genome-wide association study of yield-related traits in common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) under normal and drought treatment conditions

Abstract

The primary goal of modern wheat breeding is to develop new high-yielding and widely adaptable varieties. We analyzed four yield-related agronomic traits in 502 wheat accessions under normal conditions (NC) and drought treatment (DT) conditions over three years. The genome-wide association analysis identified 51 yield-related and nine drought-resistance-related QTL, including 13 for the thousand-grain weight (TGW), 30 for grain length (GL), three for grain width (GW), five for spike length (SL) and nine for stress tolerance index (STI) QTL in wheat. These QTL, containing 72 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), explained 2.23 – 7.35% of the phenotypic variation across multiple environments. Eight stable SNPs on chromosomes 2A, 2D, 3B, 4A, 5B, 5D, and 7D were associated with phenotypic stability under NC and DT conditions. Two of these stable SNPs had association with TGW and STI. Several novel QTL for TGW, GL and SL were identified on different chromosomes. Three linked SNPs were transformed into kompetitive allele-specific PCR (KASP) markers. These results will facilitate the discovery of promising SNPs for yield-related traits and/or drought stress tolerance and will accelerate the development of new wheat varieties with desirable alleles.

Screening and Structural Characterization of Heat Shock Response Elements (HSEs) in Entamoeba histolytica Promoters

“…Interestingly, studies like the one conducted by Zhao et al [65] have observed that variations in the magnitude of the expression response of some genes to heat stress correlate directly with the structure of HSEs and, importantly, their quantity. In certain genes, such as cup1 in S. cerevisiae or hsp70 in C. elegans, which have two or three HSEs, there is a demonstrated direct relationship between the number of HSEs and the quantity of transcript produced.…”

“…In a more recent study, Zhao et al [65] performed a pioneering genome-wide analysis of T. aestivum L., discovering 39,478 HSEs within 30,604 genes. This represents 27.6% of the total genome, a similar proportion to that observed in our study.…”

Advances in Crop Genetic Improvement to Overcome Drought Stress: Bibliometric and Meta-Analysis

“…With regard to the use of molecular markers to identify drought stress resistance in wheat and rice plants, refs. [31,[57][58][59] used quantitative trait loci (QTL) identification via marker-assisted selection to increase drought stress resistance in wheat. The authors concluded that the introgression of ancestral QTL alleles from wild wheat can increase the yield and drought resistance in domesticated wheat.…”

Genome-Wide Association Study for Yield and Yield-Related Traits in Chinese Spring Wheat

“…This increases the challenge of improving Agronomy 2023, 13, 2784 2 of 17 yield through phenotypic selection and hinders the progress of high-yield breeding [12]. Yield is primarily influenced by three factors: thousand kernel weight, kernel number per spike, and spike number per unit area [13][14][15][16]. It is also influenced by grain-related traits or yield components, such as ear weight and spike length [17].…”

“…Through genome-wide association studies (GWASs) utilizing thousands to millions of data points generated by low-cost genotyping platforms [23], the genetic architecture of yield and yield components has been reported in much previous research [16,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Wheat has a planting history of over 4000 years in China and is widely cultivated in 10 major agricultural ecological regions, each with its own unique genetic characteristics [38,39].…”