With an acreage of 217 Mio ha worldwide wheat is the most important crop species for food and feed. This holds also true for the EU and Germany where wheat was grown on 3.178 Mio ha with an average yield of 7.84 t/ha in 2009. High and stable wheat yields are of special importance for feeding the worlds growing population and to meet the demands for renewable resources. Besides drought, frost is an important abiotic factor limiting winter wheat yield especially in the eastern European and north american growing regions with a continental climate. Therefore, this project aims at improving the frost tolerance of wheat by applying a whole genome and a candidate gene association genetics approach for the development of markers facilitating an efficient marker based selection procedure for frost tolerance.

The objectives of the project are to:

(1) get information on the genetic variability for frost tolerance present in a set of diverse winter wheat
cultivars

(2) identify genomic regions influencing winter hardiness by applying a whole genome association
genetics approach

(3) resequence candidate genes for winterhardiness and frost tolerance on the set of genotypes in
order to identify haplotypes related to these traits

(4) develop molecular markers based on the results obtained in the whole genome and candidate
gene approach which facilitate efficient marker based selection procedure

(5) validate these markers developed on the association panel in biparental populations to estimate
the winter hardiness effect of these alleles in segregating populations