Consensus Genetic Linkage Map Construction Based on One Common Parental Line for QTL Mapping in Wheat

The consensus map is used for the verification of marker order, quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping and molecular marker-assisted selection (MAS) in wheat breeding. In this study, a wheat consensus genetic map named as Sp7A_G7A, was constructed using 5643 SNP markers in two double haploid (DH) populations of Spitfire × Bethlehem-7AS (Sp7A) and Gregory × Bethlehem-7AS (G7A), covering 4376.70 cM of 21 chromosomes (chr) with an average interval of 0.78 cM. The collinearity of the linkage maps with the consensus map of Con_map_Wang2014 and the physical map of wheat reference genome (IWGSC RefSeq v1.0) were analyzed based on the Spearman rank correlation coefficients. As results, the three constructed genetic maps of Sp7A, G7A and Sp7A_G7A showed high collinearity with the Con_map_Wang2014 and the physical map, and importantly, the collinearity level between our constructed maps and the wheat physical map is higher than that between the Con_map_Wang2014 and the physical map. The seed coat color QTL detected in both populations under multiple environments were on the region (745.73–760.14 Mbp) of the seed color gene R-B1/Tamyb10-B1 (TraesCS3B02G515900, 3B: 757,918,264–757,920,082 bp). The validated consensus map will be beneficial for QTL mapping, positional cloning, meta-QTL analysis and wheat breading.