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ARS Home » Plains Area » Fargo, North Dakota » Edward T. Schafer Agricultural Research Center » Cereal Crops Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #342181
Title: Genome-wide association and prediction of grain and semolina quality traits in durum wheat breeding populations

Author
item FIEDLER, JASON - North Dakota State University
item SALSMAN, EVAN - North Dakota State University
item LIU, YUAN - North Dakota State University
item JIMENEZ, MONIKA - North Dakota State University
item HEGSTAD, JUSTIN - North Dakota State University
item CHEN, BINGCAN - North Dakota State University
item MANTHEY, FRANK - North Dakota State University
item Chao, Shiaoman
item Xu, Steven
item ELIAS, ELIAS - North Dakota State University
item LI, XUEHUI - North Dakota State University

Submitted to: The Plant Genome
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/21/2017
Publication Date: 11/28/2017
Publication URL: https://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/6471047
Citation: Fiedler, J., Salsman, E., Liu, Y., Jimenez, M., Hegstad, J., Chen, B., Manthey, F.A., Chao, S., Xu, S.S., Elias, E.M., Li, X. 2017. Genome-wide association and prediction of grain and semolina quality traits in durum wheat breeding populations. The Plant Genome. 10(3). https://doi.org/10.3835/plantgenome2017.05.0038.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3835/plantgenome2017.05.0038

Interpretive Summary: Grain yield and semolina milling quality traits are essential selection criteria in durum wheat breeding. However, the high cost of phenotypic screening often limited selection to only a small number of lines and at later stages of the breeding process. This leads to relatively low selection efficiency due to advancing undesirable lines into expensive yield trials and the possibility of disposing high quality lines at early generations. In this study, we explored the breeding strategies based on genome-wide DNA markers for five grain quality traits using 1,184 breeding lines from the durum wheat breeding program at North Dakota State University. Our results suggested that implementation of marker-based breeding in durum wheat would enable breeders to select grain and semolina quality traits more efficiently and, thus, enhance genetic improvement for these traits.

Technical Abstract: Grain yield and semolina quality traits are essential selection criteria in durum wheat breeding. However, high cost of phenotypic screening limited the selection only on small number of lines and at later generations. This leads to relatively low selection efficiency due to the advancement of undesirable lines into expensive yield trials for grain yield and quality traits testing or the disposal of high quality lines in early generations. Marker-aided selection can enhance selection efficiency especially for traits that are difficult or costly to phenotype, and is routinely employed in plant breeding programs. The aim of this study was to identify major QTL to facilitate markers-assisted selection (MAS) and explore potential application of genomic selection (GS) for the quality traits in durum wheat breeding program. In this study, genome wide association mapping for five quality traits was conducted using 1,184 lines across five breeding cycles from the NDSU durum wheat breeding program. We found several QTL associated with test weight, semolina color, and gluten strength segregating in the breeding populations. GS models were developed and high forward prediction accuracies of 0.4-0.5 were obtained for the five quality traits. Our results suggested that implementation of MAS and GS in durum wheat would enable breeders to select grain and semolina quality traits more efficiently and hence enhance genetic improvement.