High-density molecular characterization and association mapping in Ethiopian durum wheat landraces reveals high diversity and potential for wheat breeding.

ABSTRACT: Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. durum) is a key crop worldwide, and yet, its improvement and adaptation to emerging environmental threats is made difficult by the limited amount of allelic variation included in its elite pool. New allelic diversity may provide novel loci to international crop breeding through quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping in unexplored material. Here, we report the extensive molecular and phenotypic characterization of hundreds of Ethiopian durum wheat landraces and several Ethiopian improved lines. We test 81 587 markers scoring 30 155 single nucleotide polymorphisms and use them to survey the diversity, structure, and genome-specific variation in the panel. We show the uniqueness of Ethiopian germplasm using a siding collection of Mediterranean durum wheat

SUBMITTER: Mengistu DK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5067613 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature