Transfer and mapping of the heat tolerance component traits of Aegilops speltoides in tetraploid wheat Triticum durum

Aegilops speltoides is an important genetic resource for wheat improvement and has high levels of heat tolerance. A heat-tolerant accession of Ae. speltoides pau3809 was crossed with Triticum durum cv. PDW274, and BC2F4-6 backcross introgression lines (BILs) were developed, phenotyped for important physiological traits, genotyped using SSR markers and used for mapping the QTL governing heat tolerance component traits. A set of 90 BILs was selected from preliminary evaluation of a broader set of 262 BILs under heat stress. Phenotyping was conducted for physiological traits such as cell membrane thermostability, chlorophyll content, acquired thermotolerance, canopy temperature and stay green. Much variation for these traits was observed in random as well as selected sets of BILs, and comparison of the BILs with the recurrent parent showed improvement for these traits under normal as well as heat stress conditions, indicating that introgressions from Ae. speltoides might have led to the improvement in the heat tolerance potential of the BILs. Introgression profiling of the 90 BILs using SSR markers identified Ae. speltoides introgression on all the 14 chromosomes with introgressions observed on A as well as B genome chromosomes. QTL mapping identified loci for various heat tolerance component traits on chromosomes 2B, 3A, 3B, 5A, 5B and 7A at significant LOD scores and with phenotypic contributions varying from 11.1 to 28.7 % for different traits. The heat-tolerant BILs and QTL reported in the present study form a potential resource that can be used for wheat germplasm enhancement for heat stress tolerance.