Population structure and genetic basis of the stripe rust resistance of 140 Chinese wheat landraces revealed by a genome-wide association study

Stripe rust caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst) is one of the most devastating foliar diseases in wheat. Host resistance is the most effective strategy for the management of the disease. To screen for accessions with stable resistance and identify effective stripe rust resistance loci, a genome-wide association study (GWAS) was conducted using a panel of 140 Chinese wheat landraces. The panel was evaluated for stripe rust response at the adult-plant stage at six field-year environments with mixed races and at the seedling stage with two separate predominant races of the pathogen, and genotyped with the genome-wide Diversity Arrays Technology markers. The panel displayed abundant phenotypic variation in stripe rust responses, with 9 landraces showing stable resistance to the mixture of Pst races at the adult-plant stage in the field and 10 landraces showing resistance to individual races at the seedling stage in the greenhouse. GWAS identified 12 quantitative trait loci (QTL) significantly (P ≤ 0.001) associated to stripe rust resistance using the field data of at least two environments and 18 QTL using the seedling data with two races. Among these QTL, 10 were presumably novel, including 4 for adult-plant resistance mapped to chromosomes 1B (QYrcl.sicau-1B.3), 4A (QYrcl.sicau-4A.3), 6A (QYrcl.sicau-6A.2) and 7B (QYrcl.sicau-7B.2) and 6 for all-stage resistance mapped to chromosomes 2D (QYrcl.sicau-2D.1), 3B (QYrcl.sicau-3B.3), 3D (QYrcl.sicau-3D), 4B (QYrcl.sicau-4B), 6A (QYrcl.sicau-6A.1) and 6D (QYrcl.sicau-6D). The landraces with stable resistance can be used for developing wheat cultivars with effective resistance to stripe rust.