Agronomic characterization of an EMS-mutagenized population for selecting high-yielding and gluten-enriched industrial wheat

A mutant population was generated using a popular wheat cultivar of Bangladesh; BARI GOM-28, with ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) to create diversity in terms of different agronomic characteristics and grain quality parameters. An EMS concentration ranging from 0.2% to 1.2% was used and the optimum was found to be 0.8%. This study was initiated with 16,000 seeds, where 1,581 lines survived under greenhouse conditions up to M4 generation. Through 3 subsequent field trials, 3 promising lines, namely, 0037/17, 0020/17 and 0023/17 were selected with enhanced spike length, number of spikes per plant, number of spikelets per spike, number of grains per spike, grains weight per plant and 1000-grain weight. Such improved agronomic traits contributed towards a greater yield potential of 0037/17 (5.94-6.10 t ha-1), 0020/17 (5.47-5.54 t ha-1) and 0023/17 (4.97-5.20 t ha-1) than BARI GOM-28 (3.63-3.69 t ha-1) in the multi-location trial. Improvement in certain bread-making qualities like wet gluten content (>28%) and total protein content (~13%) was also observed and compared to BARI GOM-28 which had 22% wet gluten and 11% total protein. Therefore, these mutant lines could be used as a valuable resource for genetic studies to dissect the function of the genes controlling such desired parameters as well as superior breeding lines.