Unraveling the genetic architecture of winter hardiness and quality traits in durum by genome wide and candidate gene based association mapping

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Friedrich Longin
• Subject Area: Plant Breeding and Plant Pathology
• Term: from 2012 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 226048836

Durum wheat is mainly grown as a summer crop. An introduction of a winter form failed until now due to the difficulty to combine winter hardiness with required process quality. Winter hardiness is a complex trait, but in most regions the frost tolerance is decisive. Thereby a major QTL, which was found in T. monococcum, T.aestivum, H. vulgare and S.cereale on chromosome 5, seems especially important. With genotyping by sequencing it is now possible to make association mapping based on very high dense marker maps, which delivers new possibilities to detect main and epistatic effects. Furthermore, new sequencing techniques allow candidate gene based association mapping. The main aim of the project is to unravel the genetic architecture of frost tolerance and quality traits in durum. Thereby, the objectives are to (1) determine the genetic variance, heritability and correlations among frost tolerance and quality traits, (2) examine linkage disequilibrium and population structure, (3) investigate sequence polymorphism at candidate genes for frost tolerance, and (4) perform candidate gene based and genome wide association mapping.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Jochen Reif; Professor Dr. Karl Schmid; Professor Dr. Tobias Würschum