Understanding the genetic basis of frost tolerance (FT) in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is essential for preventing yield losses caused by frost due to cellular damage, dehydration and reduced metabolism. FT is a complex trait regulated by a number of genes and several gene families. Availability of the wheat genomic sequence opens new opportunities for exploring candidate genes diversity for FT. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to identity SNPs and insertion-deletion (indels) in genes known to be involved in frost tolerance and to perform association genetics analysis of respective SNPs and indels on FT. Here we report on the sequence analysis of 19 candidate genes for FT in wheat assembled using the Chinese Spring IWGSC RefSeq v1.0. Out of these, the tandem duplicated C-repeat binding factors (CBF), i.e. CBF-A3, CBF-A5, CBF-A10, CBF-A13, CBF-A14, CBF-A15, CBF-A18, the vernalisation response gene VRN-A1, VRN-B3, the photoperiod response genes PPD-B1 and PPD-D1 revealed association to FT in 235 wheat cultivars. Within six genes (CBF-A3, CBF-A15, VRN-A1, VRN-B3, PPD-B1 and PPD-D1) amino acid (AA) substitutions in important protein domains were identified. The amino acid substitution effect in VRN-A1 on FT was confirmed and new AA substitutions in CBF-A3, CBF-A15, VRN-B3, PPD-B1 and PPD-D1 located at highly conserved sites were detected. Since these results rely on phenotypic data obtained at five locations in 2 years, detection of significant associations of FT to AA changes in CBF-A3, CBF-A15, VRN-A1, VRN-B3, PPD-B1 and PPD-D1 may be exploited in marker assisted breeding for frost tolerance in winter wheat. A set of 65 primer pairs for the genes mentioned above from a previous study was BLASTed against the IWGSC RefSeq resulting in the identification of 39 primer combinations covering the full length of 19 genes. This work demonstrates the usefulness of the IWGSC RefSeq in specific primer development for highly conserved gene families in hexaploid wheat and, that a candidate gene association genetics approach based on the sequence data is an efficient tool to identify new alleles of genes important for the response to abiotic stress in wheat.

Two bread wheat crosses were used to genetically map the genes determining anthocyanin pigmentation of the anther \ud (Pan-D1)\ud , culm (\ud Pc-B1\ud and \ud Pc-D1\ud ), leaf sheath \ud (Pls-B1)\ud , and leaf blade \ud (Plb-B1, Plb-D1)\ud . The genes cluster with \ud Rc-1\ud (red coleoptile) on chromosome arms 7BS and 7DS. A germplasm panel of 37 wheat cultivars and introgression lines was tested for the presence of anthocyanin pigmentation on various plant organs, and significant correlations were established between pigmentation of the coleoptile and culm, coleoptile and leaf blade, coleoptile and anther, and anther and leaf blade

Computer-aided image processing was used to study the morphology of leaf hairiness in the wheat cultivars Saratovskaya 29 and Golubka, as well as the introgressed line 102/00ⁱ of the cultivar Rodina carrying the gene for leaf hairiness introgressed from Aegilops speltoides. Morphological differences in leaf hairiness were detected and described in detail. The genetic control of hairiness was studied in two cultivars (Golubka and Saratovskaya 29) with similar hairiness patterns. Crossing these cultivars with the cultivar Rodina showed a monogenic inheritance in the cultivar Golubka and a digenic inheritance in the cultivar Saratovskaya 29, which has a denser hairiness. In the line 102/00ⁱ and the cultivar Golubka, the number of trichomes was positively correlated with their mean length. The cultivar Golubka was used as an example to study the effect of environmental conditions on the formation of hairiness. Plants of this cultivar were found to form more but shorter trichomes under field conditions.