209 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
S. H. Wani et al. (eds.), Physiological, Molecular, and Genetic Perspectives of
Wheat Improvement, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59577-7_10
Genetic Dissection for Yield
and Yield-Related Traits in Bread Wheat
(Triticum aestivum L.)
Reyazul Rouf Mir, Sachin Kumar, and Safoora Shaf
Abstract Wheat is one of the most important cereal crops of global importance.
Wheat crop provides one-ffth of the daily calories and dietary proteins for human
consumption. Improving grain yield (GY) and yield-contributing traits is consid-
ered important for increasing wheat production and therefore for food security. The
yield and traits related to yield in wheat are mostly quantitative traits controlled by
several small effect/minor genes/QTLs. Hundreds of studies have been conducted in
wheat for the discovery of genes/QTLs for yield and related traits using different
approaches. Among different approaches, linkage-based QTL mapping and associa-
tion mapping are most commonly used approaches. Traditional QTL mapping
involves the use of biparental mapping populations derived from crossing two con-
trasting parental genotypes. The other recently emerged mapping approach “asso-
ciation mapping” also known as genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that
involves the use of diverse germplasm is considered the method of choice nowadays
to unravel and understand genetics of yield and yield-related traits. Using these dif-
ferent mapping approaches, several genes/QTLs have been already identifed for
GY and yield-related traits in wheat. The QTLs/genes identifed belong to all the 21
bread wheat chromosomes. In addition, QTL × Environment, QTL × QTL, and
QTL × QTL × Environment interactions have been also worked out in detail. The
important stable and major QTLs identifed will prove useful in wheat molecular
breeding programs aimed at enhancing GY for food security.
Keywords Wheat · Yield · Yield contributing traits · QTLs · Genes · Epistatic
interactions
R. R. Mir (*) · S. Shaf
Division of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, SKUAST-Kashmir,
Wadura Sopore, India
e-mail: rrmir@skuastkashmir.ac.in
S. Kumar
Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Chaudhary Charan Singh University,
Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India