Characterizing Agronomic and Shoot Morphological Diversity across 263 Wild Emmer Wheat Accessions

Wild emmer, the direct progenitor of modern durum and bread wheat, has mostly been studied for grain quality, biotic, and abiotic stress-related traits. Accordingly, it should also have a certain amount of diversity for morphological and agronomic traits. Despite having a high chance of huge diversi...

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Main Authors: Shanjida Rahman, Shahidul Islam, Eviatar Nevo, Md Atik Us Saieed, Qier Liu, Rajeev Kumar Varshney, Wujun Ma
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2023-03-01
Series:Agriculture
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/13/4/759
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author Shanjida Rahman
Shahidul Islam
Eviatar Nevo
Md Atik Us Saieed
Qier Liu
Rajeev Kumar Varshney
Wujun Ma
author_facet Shanjida Rahman
Shahidul Islam
Eviatar Nevo
Md Atik Us Saieed
Qier Liu
Rajeev Kumar Varshney
Wujun Ma
author_sort Shanjida Rahman
collection DOAJ
description Wild emmer, the direct progenitor of modern durum and bread wheat, has mostly been studied for grain quality, biotic, and abiotic stress-related traits. Accordingly, it should also have a certain amount of diversity for morphological and agronomic traits. Despite having a high chance of huge diversity, it has not been deeply explored. In the current study, 263 wild emmer accessions collected from different regions of Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria were characterized for a total of 19 agronomic and shoot morphological traits. Three trials were carried out in Western Australia, which demonstrated a large variation in these traits. The average phenotypic diversity (H’) was 0.91 as quantified by Shannon’s diversity index. A high heritability was recorded for most of the traits, where biomass/plant and yield/plant were identified as the most potential traits. Correlation analysis revealed several significant associations between traits, including significant positive correlation between yield and tiller number, first leaf area, spike length, and biomass/plant. The principal component analysis (PCA) demonstrated that most of the traits contributed to the overall observed variability. The cluster analysis categorized 263 accessions into five clusters on average. On the other hand, accessions were categorized into eight populations based on the collection region and a comparative analysis demonstrated considerable variations between populations for plant height, spike length, and flag leaf area. Despite the low yield, several wild emmer accessions demonstrated superior performance compared to modern bread wheat cultivars, when selection was based on combining yield with multiple traits. These observations indicate that wild emmer contains a broad gene pool for several agronomic and shoot morphological traits, which can be utilized for bread and durum wheat improvement.
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spelling doaj.art-360ffb44ba8943db8be6ee19931184e02023-11-17T17:53:02ZengMDPI AGAgriculture2077-04722023-03-0113475910.3390/agriculture13040759Characterizing Agronomic and Shoot Morphological Diversity across 263 Wild Emmer Wheat AccessionsShanjida Rahman0Shahidul Islam1Eviatar Nevo2Md Atik Us Saieed3Qier Liu4Rajeev Kumar Varshney5Wujun Ma6Food Future’s Institute, School of Health, Education & Environment, Murdoch University, Perth, WA 6150, AustraliaFood Future’s Institute, School of Health, Education & Environment, Murdoch University, Perth, WA 6150, AustraliaInstitute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, IsraelFood Future’s Institute, School of Health, Education & Environment, Murdoch University, Perth, WA 6150, AustraliaFood Future’s Institute, School of Health, Education & Environment, Murdoch University, Perth, WA 6150, AustraliaFood Future’s Institute, School of Health, Education & Environment, Murdoch University, Perth, WA 6150, AustraliaFood Future’s Institute, School of Health, Education & Environment, Murdoch University, Perth, WA 6150, AustraliaWild emmer, the direct progenitor of modern durum and bread wheat, has mostly been studied for grain quality, biotic, and abiotic stress-related traits. Accordingly, it should also have a certain amount of diversity for morphological and agronomic traits. Despite having a high chance of huge diversity, it has not been deeply explored. In the current study, 263 wild emmer accessions collected from different regions of Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria were characterized for a total of 19 agronomic and shoot morphological traits. Three trials were carried out in Western Australia, which demonstrated a large variation in these traits. The average phenotypic diversity (H’) was 0.91 as quantified by Shannon’s diversity index. A high heritability was recorded for most of the traits, where biomass/plant and yield/plant were identified as the most potential traits. Correlation analysis revealed several significant associations between traits, including significant positive correlation between yield and tiller number, first leaf area, spike length, and biomass/plant. The principal component analysis (PCA) demonstrated that most of the traits contributed to the overall observed variability. The cluster analysis categorized 263 accessions into five clusters on average. On the other hand, accessions were categorized into eight populations based on the collection region and a comparative analysis demonstrated considerable variations between populations for plant height, spike length, and flag leaf area. Despite the low yield, several wild emmer accessions demonstrated superior performance compared to modern bread wheat cultivars, when selection was based on combining yield with multiple traits. These observations indicate that wild emmer contains a broad gene pool for several agronomic and shoot morphological traits, which can be utilized for bread and durum wheat improvement.https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/13/4/759wild emmerdiversityshoot morphological traitsmultivariate analysiswheat improvement
spellingShingle Shanjida Rahman
Shahidul Islam
Eviatar Nevo
Md Atik Us Saieed
Qier Liu
Rajeev Kumar Varshney
Wujun Ma
Characterizing Agronomic and Shoot Morphological Diversity across 263 Wild Emmer Wheat Accessions
Agriculture
wild emmer
diversity
shoot morphological traits
multivariate analysis
wheat improvement
title Characterizing Agronomic and Shoot Morphological Diversity across 263 Wild Emmer Wheat Accessions
title_full Characterizing Agronomic and Shoot Morphological Diversity across 263 Wild Emmer Wheat Accessions
title_fullStr Characterizing Agronomic and Shoot Morphological Diversity across 263 Wild Emmer Wheat Accessions
title_full_unstemmed Characterizing Agronomic and Shoot Morphological Diversity across 263 Wild Emmer Wheat Accessions
title_short Characterizing Agronomic and Shoot Morphological Diversity across 263 Wild Emmer Wheat Accessions
title_sort characterizing agronomic and shoot morphological diversity across 263 wild emmer wheat accessions
topic wild emmer
diversity
shoot morphological traits
multivariate analysis
wheat improvement
url https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/13/4/759
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