Dissecting the genetic basis of DUS characters in Pakistani wheat varieties

Growth habit in a panel of 102 Pakistani wheat varieties is strongly linked to SNP 1B_129176704, with an additional signal on chromosome 5B.

• Why it matters: Conventional DUS scoring depends on morphology that can shift with environment, development, and observer effects, limiting reproducibility and genetic resolution for PBR work.
• What they did: The authors phenotyped DUS traits and genotyped the germplasm using a wheat genotyping-by-targeted sequencing platform, then ran GWAS with BLINK and FarmCPU after retaining 21,670 high-quality SNPs.
• The result: The GWAS highlights character-specific genomic regions—here for growth habit—that can be validated as molecular tools to complement conventional DUS testing and support PBR implementation.

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