Abstract
Background: Genetic diversity is an essential resource for breeders to improve new cultivars with desirable characteristics. Recently, genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS), a next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology that can simplify complex genomes, has now be used as a high-throughput and cost-effective molecular tool for routine breeding and screening in many crop species, including the species with a large genome.Results: We genotyped a diversity panel of 369 Iranian hexaploid wheat accessions including 270 landraces collected between 1931 and 1968 in different climate zones and 99 cultivars released between 1942 to 2014 using 16,506 GBS-based single nucleotide polymorphism (GBS-SNP) markers. The B genome had the highest number of mapped SNPs while the D genome had the lowest on both the Chinese Spring and W7984 references. Structure and cluster analyses divided the panel into three groups with two landrace groups and one cultivar group, suggesting a high differentiation between landraces and cultivars and between landraces. The cultivar group can be further divided into four subgroups with one subgroup was mostly derived from Iranian ancestor(s). Similarly, landrace groups can be further divided based on years of collection and climate zones where the accessions were collected. Molecular analysis of variance indicated that the genetic variation was larger between groups than within group.Conclusion: Obvious genetic diversity in Iranian wheat was revealed by analysis of GBS-SNPs and thus breeders can select genetically distant parents for crossing in breeding. The diverse Iranian landraces provide rich genetic sources of tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, and they can be useful resources for the improvement of wheat production in Iran and other countries.
Highlights
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a staple food crop that feeds about 30% of the world population and provides over 20% of the calories consumed by humans (FAO, 2015)
Obvious genetic diversity in Iranian wheat was revealed by analysis of GBS-based single nucleotide polymorphism (GBS-Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)) and breeders can select genetically distant parents for crossing in breeding
A total of 133,039 GBS-SNPs were called after filtering out duplicated reads
Summary
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a staple food crop that feeds about 30% of the world population and provides over 20% of the calories consumed by humans (FAO, 2015). Due to a rapidly growing world population and climate changes, breeders and farmers are facing the challenge of increasing wheat production up to 70% by 2050 to meet future demands Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are the most abundant type of sequence variations in plant genomes (Batley and Edwards, 2007). They are suitable for analysis of genetic variation, population structure, marker-trait association, genomic selection, QTL mapping, map-based cloning, and other plant breeding applications that need large number of markers to cover entire genomes (Kumar et al, 2012). Genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS), a next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology that can simplify complex genomes, has be used as a high-throughput and cost-effective molecular tool for routine breeding and screening in many crop species, including the species with a large genome
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