Wild emmer wheat, the progenitor of modern bread wheat, exhibits great diversity in the VERNALIZATION1 gene

Beáta Strejčková; Elisabetta Mazzucotelli; Radim Čegan; Zbyněk Milec; Jan Brus; Esra Çakır; Anna Maria Mastrangelo; Hakan Özkan; Jan Šafář

doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.1106164

Wild emmer wheat, the progenitor of modern bread wheat, exhibits great diversity in the VERNALIZATION1 gene

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jan 6:13:1106164. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.1106164. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Beáta Strejčková^{1

2}, Elisabetta Mazzucotelli³, Radim Čegan^{1

4}, Zbyněk Milec¹, Jan Brus⁵, Esra Çakır⁶, Anna Maria Mastrangelo⁷, Hakan Özkan⁶, Jan Šafář¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Centre of the Region Haná for Biotechnological and Agricultural Research, Olomouc, Czechia.
² Department of Cell Biology and Genetics, Faculty of Science, Palacký University Olomouc, Olomouc, Czechia.
³ Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA) Research Centre for Genomics and Bioinformatics via San Protaso 302, Fiorenzuola d'Arda, Italy.
⁴ Department of Plant Developmental Genetics, Institute of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, ;Czechia.
⁵ Department of Geoinformatics, Faculty of Science, Palacký University Olomouc, Olomouc, Czechia.
⁶ Department of Field Crops, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Çukurova, Adana, Turkey.
⁷ Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA) Research Centre for Cereal and Industrial Crops, Foggia, Italy.

Abstract

Wild emmer wheat is an excellent reservoir of genetic variability that can be utilized to improve cultivated wheat to address the challenges of the expanding world population and climate change. Bearing this in mind, we have collected a panel of 263 wild emmer wheat (WEW) genotypes across the Fertile Crescent. The genotypes were grown in different locations and phenotyped for heading date. Genome-wide association mapping (GWAS) was carried out, and 16 SNPs were associated with the heading date. As the flowering time is controlled by photoperiod and vernalization, we sequenced the VRN1 gene, the most important of the vernalization response genes, to discover new alleles. Unlike most earlier attempts, which characterized known VRN1 alleles according to a partial promoter or intron sequences, we obtained full-length sequences of VRN-A1 and VRN-B1 genes in a panel of 95 wild emmer wheat from the Fertile Crescent and uncovered a significant sequence variation. Phylogenetic analysis of VRN-A1 and VRN-B1 haplotypes revealed their evolutionary relationships and geographic distribution in the Fertile Crescent region. The newly described alleles represent an attractive resource for durum and bread wheat improvement programs.

Keywords: GWAS; VERNALIZATION1; heading time; next generation sequencing; wild emmer wheat.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by Czech Science Foundation, grant number 22-00204S, by the Italian MUR (Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca), grant CerealMed “Enhancing diversity in Mediterranean cereal farming systems”, in the frame of PRIMA Section 2—Multi-topic 2019, and by Cukurova University Scientific Research Coord., grant number FYL-2019-11954.