Dissecting the old Mediterranean durum wheat genetic architecture for phenology, biomass and yield formation by association mapping and QTL meta-analysis

Association mapping was used to identify genome regions affecting yield formation, crop phenology and crop biomass in a collection of 172 durum wheat landraces representative of the genetic diversity of ancient local durum varieties from the Mediterranean Basin. The collection was genotyped with 1, 149 DArT markers and phenotyped in Spanish northern and southern locations during three years. A total of 245 significant marker trait associations (MTAs) (P