Analysis of genetic control and QTL mapping of essential wheat grain quality traits in a recombinant inbred population

Wheat cultivars are genetically crossed to improve end-use quality for traits as per demands of baking industry and broad consumer preferences. The processing and baking qualities of bread wheat are influenced by a variety of genetic make-ups, environmental factors and their interactions. Two wheat cultivars, WL711 and C306, derived recombinant inbred lines (RILs) with a population of 206, were used for phenotyping of quality-related traits. The genetic analysis of quality traits showed considerable variation for measurable quality traits, with normal distribution and transgressive segregation across the years. From the 206 RILs, few RILs were found to be superior to those of the parental cultivars for key quality traits, indicating their potential use for the improvement of end-use quality and suggesting the probability of finding new alleles and allelic combinations from the RIL population. Mapping analysis identified 38 putative QTLs for 13 quality-related traits, with QTLs explaining 7.9–16.8% phenotypic variation spanning over 14 chromosomes, i.e., 1A, 1B, 1D, 2A, 2D, 3B, 3D, 4A, 4B, 4D, 5D, 6A, 7A and 7B. In-silico analysis based on homology to the annotated wheat genes present in database, identified six putative candidate genes within QTL for total grain protein content, qGPC.1B.1 region. Major QTL regions for other quality traits such as TKW have been identified on 1B, 2A, and 7A chromosomes in the studied RIL population. This study revealed the importance of the combination of stable QTLs with region-specific QTLs for better phenotyping, and the QTLs presented in our study will be useful for the improvement of wheat grain and bread-making quality.