FAO/IAEA International Symposium on Plant Mutation Breeding and Biotechnology

IMPROVEMENT OF SPRING WHEAT GRAIN MICRONUTRIENTS CONCENTRATIONS THROUGH MUTATION BREEDING

Not scheduled

15m

IAEA, Vienna

Poster Enhancing agricultural biodiversity through new mutation induction techniques

Speaker

Prof. Saule Kenzhebayeva (1Kazakh National University named after al-Farabi)

Description

Bread wheat is a main crop with global importance for food security and one of the major cereal source of human nutrients. Cultivated wheat grains have low micronutrients content. Improvement of agronomic traits including grain quality require their genetic variation, which should be separable from non-genetic impacts. The main focus in wheat breeding was the replacement of traditional by modern high yielding varieties which, also led to the reduction of genetic diversity accompanied by reduced end-use quality characteristics and nutrition quality. Therefore, there is need for cereals fortification with micronutrients thereby contributing to reducing malnutrition in a cost-effective and efficient way. To broaden the genetic variation of spring wheat in Kazakhstan, mutant populations of three nationally released varieties, Zhenis, Almaken and Eritrospermum-35, were developed by irradiation with 100 Gy and 200 Gy doses and advanced to M5 lines. The grain protein content (GPC) in mutant lines was significantly higher (3.7 to 16.9%) as compared to the respective parents. The highest increase of GPC was revealed for the Zhenis lines. Depending on the genetic background of the parent varieties, the Fe concentrations (GFeC) were significantly increased at varying degrees between 1.3 to 3.4 times. The highest GFeC were identified for both the Zhenis and Almaken in M5 mutant lines. The enhancement of grain Zn concentrations (GZnC) in mutant lines was less distinct compared to that of GFeC, with means of 1.36-2.9 times higher. These ranges of GZnC were not depended on variety background. Several mutant lines showed increase of both GFeC and GZnC. A dose-dependent pattern for grain micronutrients parameters was not determined. Wheat mutant resources with high GPC, GIC and GZnC have the potential to be used in a diet aimed at reducing human nutrition deficiencies.