Abstract
Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L) is one of the three main staple crops worldwide contributing 20% calories in the human diet. Drought stress is the main factor limiting yields and threatening food security, with climate change resulting in more frequent and intense drought. Developing drought-tolerant wheat cultivars is a promising way forward. The use of holistic approaches that include high-throughput phenotyping and genetic markers in selection could help in accelerating genetic gains. Fifty advanced breeding lines were selected from the CIMMYT Turkey winter wheat breeding program and studied under irrigated and semiarid conditions in two years. High-throughput phenotyping was done for wheat crown root traits and canopy senescence dynamics using vegetation indices (green area using RGB images and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index using spectral reflectance). In addition, genotyping by KASP markers for adaptability genes was done. Overall, under semiarid conditions yield reduced by 3.09 t ha-1 (-46.8%) compared to irrigated conditions. Genotypes responded differently under drought stress and genotypes 39 (VORONA/HD24-12//GUN/7/VEE#8//. . ./8/ALTAY), 18 (BiII98) and 29 (NIKIFOR//KROSHKA) were the most drought tolerant. Root traits including shallow nodal root angle under irrigated conditions and root number per shoot under semiarid conditions were correlated with increased grain yield. RGB based vegetation index measuring canopy green area at anthesis was better correlated with GY than NDVI was with GY under drought. The markers for five established functional genes (PRR73.A1 –flowering time, TEF-7A –grain size and weight, TaCwi.4A - yield under drought, Dreb1- drought tolerance, and ISBW11.GY.QTL.CANDIDATE- grain yield) were associated with different drought-tolerance traits in this experiment. We conclude that–genotypes 39, 18 and 29 could be used for drought tolerance breeding. The trait combinations of canopy green area at anthesis, and root number per shoot along with key drought adaptability makers (TaCwi.4A and Dreb1) could be used in screening drought tolerance wheat breeding lines.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e0242472 |
Journal | PLoS ONE |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 4 April |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Funding
CIMMYT-Turkey is supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat and the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. CIMMYT thanks the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) for providing financial support through the grant OPP1133199 to AM. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We like to acknowledge Emel Ozer and Adam Ugurlu for sowing the experiment, and Jose Luis Araus Ortega and Jose Armando Fernández from the University of Barcelona for providing the training for image analysis software to author.
Funders | Funder number |
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Emel Ozer and Adam Ugurlu | |
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation | |
Department for International Development, UK Government | OPP1133199 |
Universitat de Barcelona | |
Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers |