Improving grain yield, stress resilience and quality of bread wheat using large-scale genomics

by Philomin Juliana, Jesse A. Poland, Julio Huerta-Espino, Sandesh Shrestha, Jose Crossa, Leonardo Crespo-Herrera, Fernando Henrique Toledo, Velu Govindan, Suchismita Mondal, Uttam Kumar, Sridhar Bhavani, Pawan K. Singh, Mandeep S. Randhawa, Xinyao He, Carlos Guzmán, Susanne Dreisigacker, Matthew N. Rouse, Yue Jin, Paulino Pérez-Rodríguez, Osval A. Montesinos-López, Daljit Singh, Mohammad Mokhlesur Rahman, Felix Marza, Ravi P. Singh
Scientific Research Year: 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-019-0496-6

Abstract

Bread wheat improvement using genomic tools is essential for accelerating trait genetic gains. Here we report the genomic predictabilities of 35 key traits and demonstrate the potential of genomic selection for wheat end-use quality. We also performed a large genome-wide association study that identified several significant marker–trait associations for 50 traits evaluated in South Asia, Africa and the Americas. Furthermore, we built a reference wheat genotype–phenotype map, explored allele frequency dynamics over time and fingerprinted 44,624 wheat lines for trait-associated markers, generating over 7.6 million data points, which together will provide a valuable resource to the wheat community for enhancing productivity and stress resilience.

Keywords

grain yield stress resilience large-scale genomics