THE EXPLOITATION OF GENETIC RESOURCES AND NEXT GENERATION BREEDING MAY OPEN NEW PERSPECTIVES TO INCREASE DURUM WHEAT ADAPTATION TO DROUGHT STRESS

The Mediterranean region is one of the main region aff ected by the impact of global climate change (GCC) with strong drawbacks on agricultural producti ons and thus on food security. Durum wheat (Triti cum turgidum L. var. durum) is a rain-fed crop mainly culti vated in the Mediterranean basin, which despite being able to survive various environmental stresses, is threatened by GCC. In parti cular drought stress (DS) is one of the major constraints that can negati vely aff ect crops growth and yield. Identi fying genotypes with higher adaptability to DS is thus a primary goal for researchers and breeders. In this research, we focused on a set of genes, known to be involved in DS response in other crop species, and characterise them at genomic and expression level. To bett er elucidate their involvement in DS response, a reverse genetic strategy was followed taking advantage of the wheat TILLING database (www.wheat-ti lling.com, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK). Several mutant lines carrying SNPs that should lead to a functi onal knock-out of each selected genes (both A and B alleles) were selected. The double mutants have been produced following a classical breeding scheme combined with the use of KASP markers. In parallel, an allele mining approach has been performed, with the aim to identi fy the presence of natural alleles of the selected genes within a durum wheat germplasm collecti on representati ve of the durum wheat Mediterranean culti vati on area developed at IBBR-CNR Bari. The phenotypic eff ects of each mutati on (both induced and natural) will be evaluated by using the high-throughput phenotyping platf orm held by ALSIA (Metaponto, Italy).