Abstract
Root system architecture (RSA) is a target for breeding crops with effective nutrient and water use. Breeding can use populations designed to map quantitative trait loci (QTL). Here we non-invasively phenotype roots and leaves of the 16 foundation parents of two multi-parent advanced generation inter-cross (MAGIC) populations, covering diversity in spring (CSIRO MAGIC) and winter (NIAB MAGIC) wheats. RSA components varied after 16 days in the upgraded, paper-based imaging platform, GrowScreen-PaGe: lateral root length 2.2 fold; total root length, 1.9 fold; and seminal root angle 1.2 fold. RSA components total and lateral root length had the highest root heritabilities (H2) (H2 = 0.4 for CSIRO and NIAB parents) and good repeatability (r = 0.7) in the GrowScreen-PaGe. These can be combined with leaf length (H2 = 0.8 CSIRO; 0.7 NIAB) and number (H2 = 0.6 CSIRO; 0.7 NIAB) to identify root and shoot QTL to breed for wheats with vigorous RSA and shoot growth at establishment, a critical phase for crop productivity. Time resolved phenotyping of MAGIC wheats also revealed parents to cross in future for growth rate traits (fastest: Robigus–NIAB and AC Barrie–CSIRO; slowest Rialto–NIAB and G204 Xiaoyan54–CSIRO) and root: shoot allocation traits (fast growers grew roots, notably laterals, quicker than leaves, compared to slow growers).
Highlights
Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a staple food crop for the world, providing 19% of the calories and 20% of the protein in human diets [1,2]
This study reports on the phenotypic variation in early root and shoot traits of the CSIRO and National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) multi-parent advanced generation inter-cross (MAGIC) wheat parents
We found 41% longer leaf length and 40% more shoot dry weight with CSIRO parents compared to NIAB (Tables S2 and S3)
Summary
Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a staple food crop for the world, providing 19% of the calories and 20% of the protein in human diets [1,2]. Wheat is an allohexaploid with three closely related but independently maintained genomes combined by multiple hybridizations among three progenitor species. The first hybridization occurred between the wild diploid wheat T. urartu (AA, 2n = 14) and an unknown species containing the B genome (BB, 2n = 14, most probably Aegilops speltoides), resulting in the tetraploid ancestor of modern wheat species, wild emmer wheat T. turgidum ssp. Wild emmer further hybridized with goat grass A. tauschii (DD, 2n = 14) to produce today’s modern bread wheat [2,3,4,5]. As a consequence of hybridization of three genomes, the entire bread wheat genome is exceptionally large compared to the other staple cereals maize and rice, and only recently a fully annotated reference genome has become available [6].
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