Productivity and grain nutritional value traits in wheat genotypes with different NAM-B1 gene allelic variations

Abstract

The identification of a functional NAM-B1 allele associated with a high content of grain protein and essential microelements in wheat relatives increased the distant hybridization significance for bread wheat nutritional value. The allelic polymorphism of the NAM-B1 gene in 22 wheat lines with a genetic material of T. dicoccoides, T. dicoccum, T. spelta, T. kiharаe and their parental forms and the effects of NAM-B1 gene allelic variations on the content of grain protein and essential microelements and productivity traits (vegetation period 2017–2021) were evaluated. The functional NAM-B1 allele was identified only in the samples of wheat relatives among the parental forms. All parental varieties and most of introgressive lines (77.3 %) had a non-functional allele. The genotypes with the functional NAM-B1 allele were characterized by a higher plant height and tillering, but by lower spike productivity compared to the non-functional allele genotypes. The presence of the functional NAM-B1 allele provided a high level of grain protein and zinc content and never decreased significantly a thousand-kernel weight across all studied environments. The functional NAM-B1 allele introgression could be a resource for improving the grain wheat nutritional value.