Natural allelic variation confers diversity in the regulation of flag leaf traits in wheat

Flag leaf (FL) dimension has been reported as a key ecophysiological aspect for boosting grain yield in wheat. A worldwide winter wheat panel consisting of 261 accessions was tested to examine the phenotypical variation and identify quantitative trait nucleotides (QTNs) with candidate genes influencing FL morphology. To this end, four FL traits were evaluated during the early milk stage under two growing seasons at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research. The results showed that all leaf traits (Flag leaf length, width, area, and length/width ratio) were significantly influenced by the environments, genotypes, and environments × genotypes interactions. Then, a genome-wide association analysis was performed using 17,093 SNPs that showed 10 novel QTNs that potentially play a role in modulating FL morphology in at least two environments. Further analysis revealed 8 high-confidence candidate genes likely involved in these traits and showing high expression values from flag leaf expansion until its senescence and also during grain development. An important QTN (wsnp_RFL_Contig2177_1500201) was associated with FL width and located inside TraesCS3B02G047300 at chromosome 3B. This gene encodes a major facilitator, sugar transporter-like, and showed the highest expression values among the candidate genes reported, suggesting their positive role in controlling flag leaf and potentially being involved in photosynthetic assimilation. Our study suggests that the detection of novel marker-trait associations and the subsequent elucidation of the genetic mechanism influencing FL morphology would be of interest for improving plant architecture, light capture, and photosynthetic efficiency during grain development.