Molecular characterization of local Serbian and Bulgarian wheat accessions for their contribution to sustainable agriculture

Abstract

The increasing pressure of climate change, reduction of genetic diversity on farms and constant decrease in arable land present the most challenging aspects for today's crop production. Reintroduction of diverse adapted local varieties and underutilised landraces of wheat, potentially tolerant to different biotic and abiotic stresses, could ensure stable yield under low-input agriculture. The uncharacterized local varieties and landraces of bread and durum wheat from Serbia and Bulgaria, were collected from small-scale farms and gene banks within a project funded by the Benefit-Sharing Fund of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, aiming to evaluate their genetic diversity. As a part of this comprehensive project, the selected material was evaluated using different molecular marker techniques. The level of genetic diversity and relatedness of a set of 90 Serbian and Bulgarian local varieties and landraces of bread and durum wheat was assessed using microsatellite molecular markers and 25K wheat Infinium Array. The total of 141 alleles was detected at 20 microsatellite loci with an average number of 7.05 alleles per locus. The PIC value varied from 0.344 to 0.837.