SNP markers associated with agronomic traits under drought and heat stress in wheat

Vaezi, Behrouz; Arzani, Ahmad; Haghpanah, Mostafa

doi:10.22058/jpmb.2025.2050354.1327

SNP markers associated with agronomic traits under drought and heat stress in wheat

Document Type : Original research paper

Authors

Behrouz Vaezi ¹

Ahmad Arzani ²

Mostafa Haghpanah ³

¹ Kohgiluyeh and Boyerahmad Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization(AREEO), Yasuj, Iran

² Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 8415683111, Iran

³ Dryland Agricultural Research Institute, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Gachsaran 7589172050, Iran

10.22058/jpmb.2025.2050354.1327

Abstract

Drought and heat stresses present significant challenges in agriculture production. This study evaluated CIMMYT-Mexico Core Germplasm (CIMCOG) under drought, heat, and their combined stress over two growing seasons. The germplasm was genotyped with a 35K Axiom® SNP Array to identify associations with the studied traits under these environmental conditions. The Best Linear Unbiased Predictors (BLUPs) of each line were used to calculate marker-trait associations using 16063 SNP markers with a mixed linear model (MLM). For genome-wide association mapping (GWAM), the highest number of associations was obtained for test weight (32), followed by grain hardness (17). In the case of grain yield, six SNPs were detected in association with the trait only under heat stress conditions. When applying a P-value threshold of <0.001, GWAM identified several significant associations: 11 under normal conditions, 31 under drought stress, 10 under heat stress, and 10 under combined drought-heat stress. These associations were distributed across most wheat chromosomes. The identified SNPs explained between 18% and 35.2% of the phenotypic variance. Notably, six SNPs were shared between heat and combined drought-heat stress conditions. These findings provide valuable insights for breeding programs aimed at enhancing wheat tolerance to abiotic stresses.

Keywords

Abiotic stress tolerance

GWAS

single nucleotide polymorphism

Triticum aestivum

Subjects

Plant genomics (structural, functional, and applied)

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