Dissecting durum wheat time to anthesis into physiological traits using a QTL-based model

Fine tuning crop development is a major breeding avenue to increase crop yield and for adaptation to climate change. We used an ecophysiological model that integrates our current understanding of the physiology of wheat phenology to predict the development and anthesis date of 91 recombinant inbreed lines (RILs) of durum wheat with genotypic parameters controlling vernalization requirement, photoperiod sensitivity, and earliness per se estimated using leaf stage, final leaf number, anthesis date data from a pot experiment with vernalized and nonvernalized treatments combined with short- and long-day length. Predictions of final leaf number and anthesis date of the QTL-based model was evaluated for the whole population of RILs in a set of independent field trials and for the two parents, which were not used to estimate the parameter values. Our novel approach reduces the number of environments and the time required to obtain the required data sets to develop a QTL-based prediction of model parameters. Moreover, the use of a physiologically based model of phenology gives new insight into genotype-phenology relations for wheat. We discuss the approach we used to estimate the parameters of the model and their association with QTL and major phenology genes that collocate at QTL. • Phenology is a key trait for plant adaptation to climate change. • Phenology parameters estimated under control condition experiments can be translated to the field. • Wheat phenology can be predicted by combining a process-based model with genomic information. • Future work should consider the development of spikelet primordium and floret.