Long‐term trends and genetic architecture of seed characteristics, grain yield and correlated agronomic traits in triticale (×Triticosecale Wittmack)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate long‐term genetic trends and the genetic architecture of grain yield, seed characteristics and correlated agronomic traits in triticale. Therefore, a panel of 846 diverse triticale genotypes was assessed for three agronomic and three seed shape‐ and size‐related traits. We observed a high genotypic variation and a high heritability for all traits. Analysing the development of these traits during the last decades revealed a continuous increase for grain yield and thousand‐kernel weight, and a slight increase in seed width. The seed characteristics and thousand‐kernel weight formed a complex of highly positive correlated traits. Genome‐wide association mapping revealed many small‐effect QTL and a few moderate‐effect QTL. The allele frequencies of the moderate‐effect QTL followed the same temporal trends as observed for the phenotype. In line with the phenotypic correlations, we identified several pleiotropic QTL for grain yield, thousand‐kernel weight, seed width and seed area. Our results illustrate the continuous progress achieved in triticale breeding and suggest that triticale seeds have been selected to be more spherical in modern cultivars.

The performance of phenomic selection depends on the genetic architecture of the target trait

“…Previous studies (Neuweiler et al 2020(Neuweiler et al , 2021Trini et al 2021) have reported grain yield, thousand-kernel weight and plant height based on the same field experiment. For the other traits, the Bonferroni-Holm test was used for outlier detection (Bernal-Vasquez et al 2016).…”

Genetic architecture of phenotypic indices for simultaneous improvement of protein content and grain yield in triticale (×triticosecale)

“…The genetic architecture of grain yield and protein content has been investigated in many studies for wheat (Groos et al, 2003;Nigro et al, 2019;Reif et al, 2011) and rye (Hackauf et al, 2017;Mahone et al, 2013;Miedaner et al, 2012). For triticale, grain yield has already been studied in this large diversity panel (Neuweiler et al, 2020) as well as in other studies (Liu et al, 2016(Liu et al, , 2017.…”

Weight of individual wheat grains estimated from high-throughput digital images of grain area

“…The most frequently used equipment of this type for the determination of wheat grain dimensions is likely the Marvin seed analyser (e.g. Gegas et al, 2010;Neuweiler et al, 2020;Sanchez-Bragado et al, 2020). Taking advantage that grains of modern cultivars do not vary appreciably in shape (Gegas et al, 2010), a single equation might be generated to transform the dimensions taken from 2-D images of individual grains into their dry weights that could be reasonably valid across genotypes and growing conditions.…”