abstract
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Tackling with the effect of changing climate on the wheat crop is a difficult task as the pace of changing climate does not cope up with human-controlled wheat adaptations. Cultivated germplasm, with almost nothing to contribute to this new adaptation, wild germplasm with multiple accessions with natural variation is the hope. Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana harbors a collection of >1,500 wild wheat accessions belonging to 22 different progenitor and non-progenitor species. Aegilops tauschii, the D-genome donor of wheat has been maintained and extensively evaluated at PAU, Ludhiana for different traits. Two of these Ae. tauschii accessions acc pau14135, and acc pau14170 have been identified for terminal heat stress tolerance and were crossed with two Triticum durum cultivars (PBW114 and PDW233) to generate primary synthetic hexaploids (SHWs) through spontaneous chromosome doubling. The SHWs Syn14135 and Syn14170 had high heat tolerance index (HTI) based on thousand-grain weight and the number of productive tillers. These two synthetics were crossed and backcrossed with improved versions of two Indian wheat cultivars, HD2967+Yr10 and PBW343+Yr10 and a set of 400 SHW-derived BC1F7:8 nested introgression libraries (100 from each cross) were evaluated for terminal heat stress for two consecutive years (2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21) under two sowing regimes (timely and heat stressed). Overall a variable response of these SHWs derived introgression libraries was reported for the terminal heat stress with 25 lines with high heat stress tolerance. Genotyping of these introgression libraries using the 35K Axiom® Wheat Breeder’s Array identified a total of 61 stable marker-trait associations (MTAs) with different selected agro-morphological traits and HTI were identified using three different models (MLMM, CMLM, and ECMLM). In total 1,156 candidate genes found to be associated with these 61 MTAs. These SHW derived introgression libraries with introgression from wheat wild progenitor Ae. tauschii are an excellent prebreeding material for the wheat improvement programs.