Abstract
During the 1970s, Tunisian durum wheat landraces were replaced progressively by modern cultivars. These landraces are nowadays maintained by smallholder farmers in some ecological niches and are threatened gradually by extinction resulting in the narrowing of the genetic diversity. This study aims to investigate patterns of phenotypic variability using twelve quantitative traits in a panel of 189 durum wheat landraces and seven checks, based on farmer’s population name attribution and genetic structure. Our results showed high phenotypic variability among and within landraces and checks for ten out of twelve studied traits. The principal components analysis showed similar grouping using farmers name attribution and genetic structure using K = 6. These results confirmed the identification of a new gene pool in the oases of Tunisia, represented by the sub-population Jenah Zarzoura and the robustness and high relationships between phenotypic and genome-wide genetic structure using DArTseq method. These findings will enhance the conservation efforts of these landraces and their use in breeding efforts at national and international levels to adapt to dry conditions.
Highlights
Tetraploid wheats are among the first crops that were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 10,000 years ago [1,2], the period that coincided with the human civilization emergence, marked by several events such as the development of agricultural practices and the shift from the hunter-gatherer to a sedentary and cultivator lifestyle [3,4]
Towards a better understanding of the genetic population structure of this collection, the present study aims to (1) assess the phenotypic diversity based on ten agro-morphologic and two phenological traits evaluated across six environments, (2) unlock the genetic structure based on agro-morphological characterization related to farmers’ vernacular name or/and to the genetic groups described on our previous study [31], and (3) characterize the newly identified Tunisian population Jenah Zarzoura
The highest value was observed for heading date (HD, 0.98) and the lowest value was seen for plant height (H’2, 0.60)
Summary
Tetraploid wheats are among the first crops that were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 10,000 years ago [1,2], the period that coincided with the human civilization emergence, marked by several events such as the development of agricultural practices and the shift from the hunter-gatherer to a sedentary and cultivator lifestyle [3,4]. The tetraploid wheat spread is associated with human migration, from the Fertile Crescent towards remote geographical regions and continents to reach North Africa. The process of domestication and genetic evolution of the tetraploid wheat in the Mediterranean Basin was strongly influenced by environmental conditions and different farmers’ strategies selection for desirable agronomic and end-use traits, which induced the development of diverse and well-adapted durum wheat landraces to their agro-ecological zones of origin [10]
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