Cereal Research Communications 47(3), pp. 395–408 (2019) DOI: 10.1556/0806.47.2019.24 0133-3720/$20.00 © 2019 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest The QTL Mapping of the Important Breeding Traits in Winter Triticale (×Triticosecale Wittm.) K. Wajdzik 1 *, G. Gołębiowska 1 , M. Dyda 1 , K. Gawrońska 1 , M. Rapacz 2 and M. Wędzony 1 1 Institute of Biology, Department of Cell Biology and Genetics, Pedagogical University of Cracow, Podchorążych 2, Kraków 30-084, Poland 2 Department of Plant Physiology, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Kraków, Poland (Received 19 June 2018; Accepted 13 May 2019; Communicated by A. Goyal) The increasing economic importance of triticale (×Triticosecale Wittm.) makes this syn- thetic hybrid cereal an interesting object of genetic studies. Genomic regions (QTL) of morphological winter triticale traits were determined using the mapping population of 89 doubled haploids lines (DHs) developed from F 1 hybrid of cv. ‘Hewo’ and cv. ‘Magnat’ accompanied with the genetic map consisting of 20 linkage groups assigned to the A (7), B (7), and R (6) genomes (total of 3539 DArT, SNP-DArT and SSR markers, length of 4997.4 cM). Five independent experiments were performed in the field and greenhouse controlled conditions. A total of 12 major QTLs located on 2B, 5A, 5R, and 6B chromo- somes connected to the stem length, the plant height, the spike length, the number of the productive spikelets per spike, the number of grains per spike, and the thousand kernel weight were identified by a composite interval mapping (CIM). Keywords: QTL, triticale, morphological traits, yield components, genetic map Introduction Triticale (×Triticosecale Wittm.) is a synthetic hybrid resulted from the crossing of hexa- ploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L., AABBDD) with cultivated rye (Secale cereale L., RR) and the subsequent duplication of chromosome numbers in the F 1 hybrid. Derived in this way, octoploid (AABBDDRR) is genetically not stable and D genome chromosomes are predominantly being lost during the further breeding processes. Thus, a relatively stable and the most commonly grown triticale is hexaploid with a genomic constitution of 2n = 6x = 42 chromosomes (AABBRR) (Ammar 2004). This complex origin results in frequent homological and homological translocations of chromosomal fragments be- tween component genomes (Lukaszewski 2003; Tyrka et al. 2011, 2015; Niedziela et al. 2012; Machczyńska et al. 2014). Triticale raises the interest of breeders and farmers, because it can tolerate adverse environmental conditions while producing a reasonable yield of good quality as reviewed by Blum (2014). Moreover, its grain is high in essential amino acids (Strang et al. 2016) and it has capacity to tolerate acidic soils and high aluminium concentration (Niedziela *Corresponding author; E-mail: kwajdzikup@gmail.com; Phone: +48 12 662 7832