Development of Breeder Chip for Gene Detection and Molecular-Assisted Selection by Target Sequencing in Wheat

Wheat is an essential food crop and its high and stable yield is suffering from great challenges due to the limitations of current breeding technology and various stresses. Accelerating molecularly assisted stress-resistance breeding is critical. Through a meta-analysis of published loci in wheat over the last two decades, we selected 60 loci with main breeding objectives, high heritability, and reliable genotyping, such as stress resistance, yield, plant height, and resistance to spike germination. Then, using genotyping by target sequencing (GBTS) technology, we developed a liquid phase chip based on 101 functional or closely linked markers. The genotyping of 42 loci was confirmed in an extensive collection of Chinese wheat cultivars, indicating that the chip can be used in molecular-assisted selection (MAS) for target breeding goals. Besides, we can perform the preliminary parentage analysis with the genotype data. The most significant contribution of this work lies in translating a large number of molecular markers into a viable chip and providing reliable genotypes. Breeders can quickly screen germplasm resources, parental breeding materials, and intermediate materials for the presence of excellent allelic variants using the genotyping data by this chip, which is high throughput, convenient, reliable, and cost-efficient.