Genetic Contribution of Ningmai 9 Wheat to Its Derivatives Evaluated by Using SNP Markers

Founder parent usually plays an important role in wheat breeding. Ningmai 9 is a soft wheat variety with good performance in yield, quality, and resistance to wheat disease. Therefore it serves as an important commercial variety and founder parent in middle and lower Yangtze River of China. To date, 20 new cultivars have been developed from Ningmai 9 and released to wheat production in the last 10 years. In this study, the 90K iSELECT ILLUMINA chip was used to analyze the genotype of Ningmai 9 and its 17 derivatives. The genetic similarity coefficients between Ningmai 9 and its derivatives were more than 0.7 except for Yangfumai 4. Neighbor-Joining analysis showed that Yangfumai 4 had the largest genetic distance from Ningmai 9 in all derivatives. There was a great difference for the same allele ratio in either derivatives or chromosomes, though the average values of the same allele ratio in genomes A, B, and D were close to each other. The phenotypic difference in Ningmai 9, Ningmai 13, and Yangfumai 4 was consistent with their difference in genetic background by comparing previous reported QTLs. Some hot chromosome regions were found and might be used for marker assisted selection in wheat breeding.