Wheat is one of the major cultivated staple food crops and is consumed by over 2.5 billion people globally as its main source of energy. Besides, wheat is also a good source of macro- and micronutrients, according to a USDA report. Besides, there is a need to focus on nutritional quality in wheat as an important criteria to meet the requirements of micronutrients as well.

Among the micronutrients, zinc and iron play a vital role in a number of metabolic activities; hence, biofortification is necessary to increase the concentration of Fe and Zn content in wheat through breeding aspects. In this regard, CIMMYT-BISA is implementing a number of wheat breeding initiatives for the biofortification of zinc and iron through selection, introgressions, and advancement of the number of wheat lines through international and national field evaluations across the country and beyond.

Here we present the Zn and iron evaluation results of around 6,000 wheat lines from various trials, such as SABWGPYT, HZAN, HZWYT, ESWYT, SAWYT, SATYN, etc. The results suggested that there is a positive correlation and synergy between zinc and iron, and some of our wheat lines revealed the presence of zinc and iron at concentrations of more than 60 ppm and 70 ppm, respectively.

Our analysis further revealed that the accumulation of zinc and iron is based on genotype and environmental interactions, as some of the specific locations derived lines showed relatively better zinc and iron content than other lines, signifying the importance of the epigenetic mechanism behind the biofortification of these microelements.