P0308 Meta-analysis of wheat QTL associated with heat and drought tolerance

Andrea Acuna , University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
Elizabeth Studebaker , University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
Diana Carolina Ballesteros Benavides , University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
Nithya Subramanian , University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
Esten Mason , University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
Heat and drought are the two most important environmental constraints to wheat production globally, are often present simultaneously and will become more severe with global climate change.  This presents a unique challenge to wheat scientists who must work to develop wheat cultivars that are productive and adapted to future environmental conditions.    Understanding and improving complex traits requires an approach that integrates traditional breeding with advanced genetic and physiological techniques.  A number of recent studies have reported QTL associated with heat and drought tolerance, as well as QTL for stress adaptive traits such as the availability of stem carbohydrates or crop canopy temperature.  While biparental mapping provides insight into the genetic control of a trait, the importance of the detected regions in additional genetic backgrounds is often unknown.  The goal of this study was to conduct a QTL meta-analysis of wheat genome regions associated with heat and drought stress tolerance.  This was done in three steps; 1) Develop a database containing QTL profiles of 30 recent studies targeted specifically at heat and drought tolerance and/or adaptive physiological traits, 2) Project QTL locations and confidence intervals onto the consensus genetic map developed by Somers et al. (2004) and, 3) Identify conserved QTL regions and molecular markers associated with heat and drought tolerance.  In total, 852 QTL were characterized for 84 different traits.  Co-localization of agronomic and physiological adaptive traits, overlap between heat and drought tolerance QTL and the potential of marker assisted selection for abiotic stress tolerance will be discussed.