Genomic regions controlling yield-related traits in spring wheat: a mini review and a case study for rainfed environments in Australia and China

A genome-wide association study (GWAS) was performed in six environments to identify major or consistent alleles responsible for wheat yield traits in Australia and North China where rainfed farming system is adopted. A panel of 228 spring wheat varieties were genotyped by double digest restriction-site associated DNA genotypingby-sequencing. A total of 223 significant marker-trait association (MTAs) and 46 candidate genes for large-or consistent-effect MTAs were identified. The results were compared with previous studies based on a mini-review of 23 GWAS analyses on wheat yield. A phenomenon seldom reported in previous studies was that MTAs responsible for the trait tended to cluster together at certain chromosome segments, and many candidate genes were in the form of gene clusters. Although linkage disequilibrium (LD) might contribute to the co-segregation of the regions, it also suggested that marker-assisted selection (MAS) or transgenic method targeting a single gene might not be as effective as MAS targeting a larger genomic region where all the genes or gene clusters underlying play important roles.

Automated summary

This study conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in six different environments in Australia and North China to identify alleles responsible for wheat yield traits. They found significant marker-trait associations (MTAs) and candidate genes, and observed that MTAs tended to cluster together at certain chromosome segments. This finding suggests that marker-assisted selection (MAS) targeting a larger genomic region may be more effective than targeting a single gene.