Development and characterization of a wild emmer wheat backcross introgression population for hard winter wheat improvement

Wild emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccoides) is the tetraploid progenitor of hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and is known to be a valuable source of genetic variation for wheat improvement. However, direct evaluation of wild emmer diversity for agronomic potential has limited value unless performed in the backgrounds of adapted cultivars. Here, we present a genetic characterization of a population of 1601 backcross recombinant inbred lines, with an average genome composition of 75% bread wheat and 25% wild emmer. Low-coverage whole-genome sequencing allowed introgressions and aneuploidies to be identified at a relatively low cost per sample. We identified a relatively large proportion of small introgressions (median length 38 Mb), and we found introgressions to be distributed across all chromosomes. Approximately 44% of genotyped progeny carried at least one aneuploidy, with monosomies being by far the most common. This population, which we have denoted as the Great Plains Wild Emmer/Hard Winter Wheat introgression population (GPWEW-IP), is, to our knowledge, the first introgression population developed through the direct hybridization of wild emmer wheat and US-adapted hard winter wheat. We believe that this population represents a valuable resource for wheat breeders and will accelerate the discovery and integration of useful variation from wild emmer wheat.