Determination of haplotype variation and relationship between desirable agronomic traits and microsatellite alleles on chromosomes 4B and 7D in bread wheat

The aim of this study was to determine the haplotype groups and identify the specific alleles associated with desirable agronomic characteristics in bread wheat. For this purpose, 42 local bread wheat genotypes belong to Iran region and nine commercial cultivars along with Chinese Spring variety (reference genotype) were cultivated in the format of augmented design and evaluated based on their 13 phenotypic traits. The results of descriptive statistics showed that awn length and day to flowering had the highest and lowest phenotypic coefficient of variation, respectively. Eight microsatellite markers were used to investigate the haplotype variation of QTLs associated with phenotypic traits located on wheat chromosomes 4B and 7D. The result showed that the genotypes were classified into 13 and 6 haplotype groups according to the allelic comparison with the reference genotype on chromosome 4B and 7D, respectively. In order to investigate the relationship between traits and markers, analysis of variance was performed based on completely randomized design with unequal numbers of replications for each marker. In general, of the 13 traits studied, there was a statistically significant linkage for eight traits and for the three traits, an allele-specific was introduced simultaneously. If the breeders are interested in genotype selection that simultaneously have three desirable characteristics such as early anthesis, semi-dwarfing and a greater number of grains per spike, they can use an allele-specific (153 bp) of Xgwm149-4B marker.