Assessment of genetic diversity and identification of SSR markersassociated with grain iron content in Iranian prevalent wheatgenotypes

Iron is one of the most important nutrients in the human diet. According to the high consumption of staplefoods such as wheat, the deficiency of iron in these crops would lead to nutritional disorders and relatedcomplications. To identify microsatellite markers associated with wheat grain iron content,38Iranianprevalent wheat genotypes were assessed using 30 pairs of genomic and EST microsatellite markers.Based on field experiments, significant difference was observed among studied genotypes for grain ironcontent which ranged from 34-53 mg/Kg. in the molecular experiment, the range of alleles per SSR locuswas 2-9 with a mean of 4.5 and the mean of polymorphism information content (PIC) was 0.55. Thestepwise regression analysis has been used for estimating the relationship between microsatellite markersand grain iron content. The results indicated that Xwmc617 (4A, 4B, 4D), Xgwm160 (4A) and Xbarc146(6D,6B,6A) were significantly correlated with wheat grain iron content. The results of this research canbe used in further studies and marker assisted breeding of wheat to increase grain iron content.

Keywords:

micronutrient , microsatellite marker , stepwise regression , wheat