Harnessing the diversity of wild emmer wheat for genetic improvement of durum wheat.

durum wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. durum) lines by crossing and backcrossing nine wild emmer wheat (T. turgidum ssp. dicoccoides) accessions with the common durum wheat cultivar 'Miki 3'. Here, we describe the development of this population, which we named as multiple derivative lines (MDLs), and demonstrated its suitability for durum wheat breeding. We genotyped the MDL population, the parents, and 43 Sudanese durum wheat cultivars on a Diversity Array Technology sequencing platform. We evaluated days to heading and plant height in Dongola (Sudan) and in Tottori (Japan). The physical map length of the MDL population was 9 939 Mb with an average of 1.4 SNP/Mb. The MDL population had greater diversity than the Sudanese cultivars. We found high gene exchange between the nine wild emmer accessions and the MDL population, indicating that the MDL captured most of the diversity in the wild emmer accessions. Genome-wide association analysis identified three loci for days to heading on chromosomes 1A and 5A in Dongola and one on chromosome 3B in Tottori. For plant height, common genomic loci were found on chromosomes 4A and 4B in both locations, and one genomic locus on chromosome 7B was found only in Dongola. The results revealed that the MDLs are an effective strategy towards harnessing wild emmer wheat diversity for wheat genetic improvement.