Genetic Diversity of Registered Wheat Varieties in Henan Province Based on Pedigree and Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism

To understand the genetic diversity of wheat varieties in Henan Province at whole genome level, we selected 96 regis- tered wheat varieties in the past decade for SNP genotyping using the Illumina 90k iSelect SNP chip. The results showed that 47.39% of the SNPs (38 661 out of 81 587) were polymorphism between varieties. The genome distribution of polymorphic SNPs showed a tendency of B > A > D. The genetic similarity of the 96 varieties ranged from 0.552 to 0.998 with an average value of 0.719. However, genetic similarity of 0.652 to 0.812 was found for 94.3% of the tested varieties, indicating highly similarity for most of the varieties in Henan province. The 96 wheat varieties could be classified as seven groups by UPGMA analyses. Based on pedigree and SNP analyses, very narrow genetic background was observed for the registered varieties in the past decade in Henan province. It is an urgent task for wheat breeders to explore and introduce diversified germplasm resources into wheat breeding program to increase the yield potential and stress tolerance in the future.