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Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Evaluation of functional kompetitive allele-specific PCR (KASP) markers for selection of drought-tolerant wheat (Triticum aestivum) genotypes

Marya Rubab A B , Summiya Jannat B , Haytham Freeg C , Hina Abbas A , Kotb A. Attia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2992-1765 D * , Sajid Fiaz https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9097-4359 E , Nageen Zahra A , Muhammad Uzair https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8329-9762 A , Safeena Inam A , Asad Hussain Shah B , Itoh Kimiko F , Muhammad Kashif Naeem A * and Muhammad Ramzan Khan orcid.org/0000-0001-9167-6556 A *
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A National Institute for Genomics and Advanced Biotechnology (NIGAB), National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), Park Road, Islamabad 45500, Pakistan.

B Department of Biotechnology, University of Kotli, Kotli, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan.

C Rice Biotechnology Lab., Rice Research and Training Center, Field Crops Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Kafrelsheikh 33717, Egypt.

D Department of Biochemistry, College of Science, King Saud University, POX 2455-11451, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

E Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, The University of Haripur, Haripur 22620, Pakistan.

F Institute of Science and Technology, Niigata University, Ikarashi-2, Nishi-ku, Niigata 950-2181, Japan.


Handling Editor: Muhammad Waseem

Functional Plant Biology 51, FP23032 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP23032
Submitted: 23 February 2023  Accepted: 6 May 2023  Published: 13 June 2023

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing

Abstract

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is a major crop around the globe and different techniques are being used for its productivity enhancement. Germplasm evaluation to improve crop productivity mainly depends on accurate phenotyping and selection of genotypes with a high frequency of superior alleles related to the trait of interest. Therefore, applying functional kompetitive allele-specific PCR (KASP) markers for drought-related genes is essential to characterise the genotypes for developing future climate-resilient wheat crop. In this study, eight functional KASP markers and nine morphological traits were employed to evaluate the 40 wheat genotypes for drought tolerance. Morphological traits showed significant variation (P ≤ 0.05) among the genotypes, except tiller count (TC), fresh root weight (FRW) and dry root weight (DRW). PCA biplot showed that 63.3% phenotypic variation was explained by the first two PCs under control treatment, while 70.8% variation was explained under drought treatment. It also indicated that root length (RL) and primary root (PR) have considerable variations among the genotypes under both treatments and are positively associated with each other. Hence, the findings of this study suggested that both these traits could be used as a selection criterion to classify the drought-tolerant wheat genotypes. KASP genotyping accompanied by morphological data revealed that genotypes Markaz, Bhakar Star, China 2, Aas and Chakwal-50 performed better under drought stress. These outperforming genotypes could be used as parents in developing drought-tolerant wheat genotypes. Hence, KASP genotyping assay for functional genes or significant haplotypes and phenotypic evaluation are prerequisites for a modern breeding program.

Keywords: climate-resilient varieties, drought tolerance, high-throughput genotyping, KASP markers, root traits, tillering stage.

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