2023-12-15 12:15:30
Wheat is a widely cultivated cereal that is essential for feeding humanity, providing around 20% of the daily intake of calories and protein in the diet worldwide. However, like the rest of agriculture, it faces the challenge of guaranteeing food security for a constantly growing world population, with the added difficulty of limited arable land and changing climatic conditions. Plant breeding plays a fundamental role thanks to the development of improved crops that respond to this challenge.
With this objective, researchers from the Higher Technical School of Agronomic, Food and Biosystems Engineering (ETSIAAB) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), in Spain, in collaboration with researchers from the INIA (National Institute of Agricultural and Food Research and Technology ), dependent on the Higher Scientific Research Council (CSIC) in Spain, and with researchers from the JIC (John Innes Center) in the United Kingdom, have carried out a genomic association analysis in order to identify new regions of the genome involved in the control genetic traits related to yield, grain size and shape, and adaptability.
“It is necessary to identify new favorable genes or alleles that control key traits for crop improvement, such as yield, to help the development of high-yielding varieties that help guarantee food security,” explains Matilde López Fernández, member of the Group of Research ‘Plant Genetic Improvement’ of the ETSIAAB and co-author of this work. Clarifying the genetic control of performance is quite a challenge, since it is mainly a quantitative trait controlled by multiple genes and affected by environmental factors.
To develop this work, the researchers have used and completed the genotypic and phenotypic data, obtained in previous studies by their research group, of a set of 189 traditional varieties of common wheat, from the collection of the INIA Plant Genetic Resources Center. that cover all the ecological and geographical diversity of Spain. “One of the main requirements for association analyzes is the use of highly diverse populations, as the selected local varieties have shown to be, which allow capturing the genetic variability available for the traits of interest,” explains Laura Pascual, co-author of the work. “In this sense, local varieties of wheat, cultivated for centuries in a traditional way throughout Spanish geography, have been specifically adapted to the ecoclimatic conditions of their different regions of origin and to low-input agricultural systems, and represent a source of very valuable genetic variability yet to be exploited in improvement programs,” adds the ETSIAAB researcher.
Wheat field. (Photo: Curt Reynolds/USDA-FAS)
Identified new genomic regions involved in performance control
The association analysis revealed a total of 881 significant associations, which were grouped in 366 genomic regions distributed throughout the wheat genome and involved in the control of the evaluated traits. “Given the high number of associations detected in this study, we focused on those that we found associated with at least four characters, obtaining 33 regions of particular interest in improvement,” details researcher Patricia Giraldo. “In addition, due to the importance of yield in genetic improvement programs, we decided to deepen the study of the 6 most promising regions for yield control, that is, those associated with various characteristics of grain size and shape, as well as about the weight of a thousand grains in at least three environments,” he points out.
In-depth analysis of the annotated genes in the six regions revealed a total of 15 candidate genes for the genetic control of grain size and weight. Future analysis of these genes will allow us to delve deeper into the genetic basis of these traits directly related to wheat yield.
For the authors of the study, the importance of these results, published in the journal Theoretical and Applied Genetics and which form part of the doctoral thesis of Matilde López Fernández, carried out thanks to a predoctoral contract of the UPM’s Own Program, lies in the possibilities that poses in order to increase crop yields. “These results provide a starting point for future analyzes aimed at the identification and validation of genes related to wheat yield,” the researchers explain.
El estudio se titula “Genome wide association in Spanish bread wheat landraces identifies six key genomic regions that constitute potential targets for improving grain yield related traits”. Y se ha publicado en la revista académica Theoretical and Applied Genetics. (Fuente: UPM)
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