*ana.lovric@bc-institut.hr

Pre-harvest sprouting (PHS), which refers to the germination of grains in the spike before harvest in response to rain, can affect the yield and quality of wheat grain. PHS is a quantitative trait controlled by a large number of genes, and QTLs for resistance to PHS have previously been found on almost all wheat chromosomes. Despite the large number of published QTLs, there is a lack of information on their presence and effect in wheat germplasm relevant for breeding programs in Southeastern Europe.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the phenotypic variation in PHS resistance of 200 winter wheat cultivars adapted to the growing conditions in Southeastern Europe and to investigate the allelic impact of 38 SNP markers previously reported to be associated with PHS resistance on the PHS phenotype. Cultivars were evaluated for PHS phenotype in four environments using germination tests from which germination index (GI) was calculated.

Combined ANOVA across environments revealed that genetic (G), environmental (E) and G × E interaction variance accounted for 46, 22 and 27% of the total phenotypic variance, respectively, with an estimated broad-sense heritability of 0.86. After excluding markers with an extremely high rate of missing data and those that are monomorphic, 21 polymorphic SNP markers were analyzed for their effects on GI, considering only homozygous genotypes that have either a tolerant or a susceptible allele.

Analysis of variance across environments revealed that GI was significantly affected by the environment (E) for 21 markers, by the genotype of the marker (G) for 12 markers, and by the G × E interaction for eight markers.

Of the 12 markers that showed a significant genotypic effect on GI, two were from chromosome 3A, two from 3B, six from 4A and one each from chromosomes 5A and 7B. The functional marker TaMKK3 from chromosome 4A showed the largest effect on PHS resistance and explained 17.4% of the phenotypic variance for GI across four environments. The results of the present study could be useful in the selection of markers for marker-assisted selection for PHS resistance in wheat.