Breeding Value of Primary Synthetic Wheat Genotypes for Grain Yield

PLoS One. 2016 Sep 22;11(9):e0162860. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162860. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

To introduce new genetic diversity into the bread wheat gene pool from its progenitor, Aegilops tauschii (Coss.) Schmalh, 33 primary synthetic hexaploid wheat genotypes (SYN) were crossed to 20 spring bread wheat (BW) cultivars at the International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center. Modified single seed descent was used to develop 97 populations with 50 individuals per population using first back-cross, biparental, and three-way crosses. Individuals from each cross were selected for short stature, early heading, flowering and maturity, minimal lodging, and free threshing. Yield trials were conducted under irrigated, drought, and heat-stress conditions from 2011 to 2014 in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico. Genomic estimated breeding values (GEBVs) of parents and synthetic derived lines (SDLs) were estimated using a genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) model with markers in each trial. In each environment, there were SDLs that had higher GEBVs than their recurrent BW parent for yield. The GEBVs of BW parents for yield ranged from -0.32 in heat to 1.40 in irrigated trials. The range of the SYN parent GEBVs for yield was from -2.69 in the irrigated to 0.26 in the heat trials and were mostly negative across environments. The contribution of the SYN parents to improved grain yield of the SDLs was highest under heat stress, with an average GEBV for the top 10% of the SDLs of 0.55 while the weighted average GEBV of their corresponding recurrent BW parents was 0.26. Using the pedigree-based model, the accuracy of genomic prediction for yield was 0.42, 0.43, and 0.49 in the drought, heat and irrigated trials, respectively, while for the marker-based model these values were 0.43, 0.44, and 0.55. The SYN parents introduced novel diversity into the wheat gene pool. Higher GEBVs of progenies were due to introgression and retention of some positive alleles from SYN parents.

Grants and funding

This work was a Ph.D. project entitled, “Determining the breeding value of primary synthetic wheats for increased grain yield” was funded by the Monsanto's Beachell-Borlaug International Scholars Program which supports Ph.D. students from developing countries who are working on breeding of wheat and rice. This award did not have grant number and the funder’s URL is http://www.monsanto.com/improvingagriculture/Pages/beachell-borlaug-internationalscholars-program.aspx. This project was conducted in the Global Wheat Program (GWP) of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico that developed the experimental populations and supported two years of field trials. Funding to conduct the first year of phenotypic experiments and to generate the sequencing data used in this project was provided by “Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación (SAGARPA Mexico)” through the MasAgro Biodiversidad/Seeds of Discovery Project-CIMMYT. http://www.cimmyt.org/, http://www.cimmyt.org/seeds-of-discovery/, http://www.cimmyt.org/project-profile/masagro-biodiversity/, http://seedsofdiscovery.org/. This research was supported in part by USDA-NIFA-AFRI grants, award numbers 2009-65300-05661, 2011-68002-30029, and 2005-05130, and by Hatch project 149-449.