*Email: rrmir@skuastkashmir.ac.in

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important cereal crops in the world. The crop is considered crucial for ensuring food security and doubling farmers income in Kashmir valley. Therefore, efforts are being made by us to breed wheat varieties that will suit Kashmir valley.

Our broader wheat breeding objectives including

breeding early maturity wheat varieties that can fit into rice-wheat crop rotation,

(ii) breeding stripe rust and foliar blight resistant wheat varieties,

(ii) breeding wheat varieties tolerant to cold/freezing,

(iv) breeding wheat varieties resistant to army worm and cereal leaf beetle infestation (two devastating insect pests of wheat in Kashmir valley).

In addition, efforts are being made to pyramid several traits/gene together through molecular breeding approaches. As a partner in several national and international wheat breeding programs, we have procured more than 10,000 wheat genotypes including 2 core sets, 7 mini-core sets, 3 mapping populations, released wheat varieties, advanced breeding lines, landraces and evaluated them for a variety of traits including biotic (stripe rust, leaf blight, army worm and cereal leaf beetle) and abiotic stresses (cold/freezing), nutrition, pre-harvest sprouting, lodging, growth, phenology, yield and yield contributing traits. The analysis of trait data led to the identification of most promising/candidate genotypes for almost all the important targeted traits. The candidate genotypes are being used in different breeding programs for the development of climate resilient, nutrient dense and disease resistant next-generation wheat varieties.

All the core sets and mini-core sets have been genotyped with 35K SNP genotyping platform. The trait data recorded in different environments over years and genotypic data has been sued together to identify genes/QTLs for these targeted traits through genome-wide association study (GWAS). Several important genes/QTLs/associated markers discovered for stripe rust, leaf blight, lodging, nutrition, pre-harvest sprouting tolerance, army worm, and cereal leaf beetle will prove useful in wheat molecular breeding programs world-wide.

 We have also used multi-omics approaches including transcriptomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, proteomics and metabolomics for understanding the mechanism involved in cold tolerance, stripe rust resistance and cereal leaf beetle resistance using contrasting wheat genotypes.