Wheat

CORNET WHEAT STRESS - Improving yield stability in winter wheat cultivars under environmental stress conditions

Persons in charge: Michael Schmolke, Maren Livaja
Project duration: 01.10.2009 – 30.09.2011
Project partners: Vereinigung der Pflanzenzüchter und Saatgutkaufleute Österreichs, AGES - Agentur für Gesundheit und Ernährungssicherheit, Hungarian Seed Association, Cereal Research Non Profit Company, GFP
Project coordination: Gemeinschaft zur Förderung der privaten deutschen Pflanzenzüchtung (GFP)
Funding: Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology

Project description:
The European Union with a production of 121 million tons is one of the most significant wheat producers in the world. The impacts of global climate change are also being observed in Europe and projected to become more severe. Extreme weather events like heat waves and droughts are expected to become more frequent and intense. Regions most prone to an increase in drought risk are the Mediterranean and widespread regions of Central and Eastern Europe. In order to meet the increasing request for wheat it is necessary to develop cultivars with high yield stability and high baking quality even under unfavorable environmental conditions.

Within the WHEAT STRESS project the genetic variation in terms of abiotic stress tolerance will be investigated in breeding material of European winter wheat. Genotypes will be identified which exhibit a high drought and heat tolerance, associated with stable yield and quality properties. The innovation targets of this project are the identification of drought stress tolerant genotypes, the establishment of screening techniques for drought/heat tolerance traits appropriate for a large scale application in breeding programs, and the development of new molecular markers linked to drought/heat tolerance traits suitable for marker-assisted selection.

Morpho-physiological traits like flag leaf senescence, chlorophyll content of leaves, canopy temperature, leaf conductance, and osmotic adjustment will be examined to establish selection criteria applicable for breeding programs.
In order to discover new QTLs associated with tolerance to abiotic stresses specific for European winter wheat a molecular mapping approach will be implemented using doubled haploid (DH) winter wheat mapping populations. A suitable marker density is realized through a combination of SSR markers (Simple Sequence Repeats) with the chip based DArTs approach (Diversity Arrays Technology). Here we will investigate the marker haplotypes of known abiotic stress tolerance QTLs within a set of winter wheat genotypes in order to identify useful haplotypes for European breeding programs.

Haplotyping of known QTL regions and screening for allelic variation of candidate genes associated with drought tolerance within the elite winter wheat genotypes and the parental cultivars of the mapping populations will be performed by means of EcoTILLING and/or by direct sequencing. EcoTILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions IN Genomes) is a platform for classifying SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) haplotypes at target loci. A range of candidate genes for abiotic stress tolerance are available and selected candidate genes will be analysed to explore their contribution to drought tolerance. Identified polymorphisms will be used to develop PCR based markers suitable for marker-assisted selection and genetic mapping.