Allelic Variations of Functional Markers for Quality Traits in Indian Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Cultivars and Their Correlation With Bread Making Quality

Today the most challenging task for wheat breeders is to increase grain yield as well as improving the grain quality for end product manufacture to meet the demand of increasing population. Direct estimation of quality traits is costly and time consuming as well as requires a large amount of grain. Some wheat quality traits  such as high and low molecular weight glutenins, puroindolines and variation in granule-bound starch synthase, absence of IBL.1RS translocation  are good predictor of bread making quality.  In the present study, forty two spring wheat cultivars from five major wheat cultivating agro-climatic zones of India viz., North Western Plains Zone (NWPZ), North Eastern Plains Zone (NEPZ), North Hill Zone (NHZ) Peninsular Zone (PZ) and Central Zone (CZ) were used to investigate the allelic variations for HMW and LMW glutenin subunits, grain texture, GBSS1 and presence of 1RS.1BL translocation using PCR-based DNA markers. PCR-based DNA markers are an efficient method to select genotypes with good bread making characteristics. In total, eight allele/ allelic pairs at Glu-1, six alleles at Glu-3 loci, two alleles for puoindolines, and two alleles at Wx-B1 were identified.  Allele or allelic pair Glu-A1b (60%) at Glu-A1, Glu-B1i (30%) at Glu-B1 and Glu-D1a (56%) at Glu-D1, Glu-A3b (83%) at Glu-A3 loci, Wx-B1b (60%) at Wx-B1 loci and absence of 1RS.1BL translocation (60%) were present most frequently in wheat genotypes tested. The correlation between alleles for above mentioned quality traits and bread making quality was also studied.