SNP-based genetic diversity assessment among hungarian bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes

World’s food supply will be a great challenge due to the rapid growth of human population. Therefore, wheat breeders are facing a great task to improve further the crop quality and quantity. Genetic improvement could be the key in this progression, which is based on the exploitation of genetic resources. So it is important to hold exact information about the wheat population structure, especially the genetic diversity of elite crop germplasm. Here, we provide the characterisation of 85 Hungarian wheat varieties from 3 different Hungarian breeding programmes (Szeged, Martonvásár and Karcag) trough Competitive Allele-Specific PCR (KASP) technique. Population structure of these accessions were examined by STRUCTURE software and the ΔK values were calculating by the STRUCTURE HARVESTER. These investigations revealed 3 subgroups in our wheat population with 21, 19 and 45 genotypes in GrI, GrII and GrIII, respectively. We could conclude that the GrI and GrIII subgroups contained genotypes from all three origins while GrII contained genotypes only from Szeged. We also examined the allele distribution of the Xgwm261 locus since the 192 bp allele is reported to be linked to semi-dwarfing gene Rht8, which has important role in the breeding process. Altogether we could observe 5 size variant products, but the 174 bp (22.35%), 192 bp (55.29%), and 198 bp (12.94%) long fragments could be found the most frequently. The present study confirms that population structure and genotype relatedness, based on molecular data, are consistent with the geography origin and available pedigree data. Moreover, this study could be the starting point of a following association mapping work

The anthocyanin content of blue and purple coloured wheat cultivars and their hybrid generations

The anthocyanin content of spring and winter wheat cultivars and their hybrids with purple and blue coloured grains was evaluated under Hungarian growing conditions. In all 3 years the anthocyanin content of blue grained wheats was significantly higher than that of purple ones. Anthocyanin content was influenced by environmental factors. In the progenies of crosses between Hungarian hard red winter wheat cultivars and blue-grained varieties, the anthocyanin content of the grind was 21–157 mg/kg, while that of the flour was 5.3–17.4 mg/kg. Consequently, most of the anthocyanin content was in the bran. The high anthocyanin content of blue and purple wheat varieties can be applied successfully for elevating the anthocyanin content of bakery products if whole-meal flour or bran is used