marker-trait association of russian wheat aphid (diuraphisnoxia) resistance in the global diversity set of wild barely

The russian wheat aphid (rwa, diuraphis noxia ), prevalent pest affecting barley globally , can severely damage barley yield and grain quality. the present study aimed to identify simple sequence repeat (ssr) markers associated with rwa resistance in wild barley ( hordeum vulgare subsp. spontaneum ). thirty wild bar le y accessions were selected from the icarda g ene b ank and iran to represent 10 asia countries scattered along the natural geographic distribution of the species for rwa resistance. five traits including leaf chlorosis, leaf rolling, chlorophyll a, b, and total chlorophyll concentration were evaluated. fourteen ssr markers were used to assess genetic diversity. the association between 52 polymorphic ssr markers and rwa resistance traits was examined using both general linear model (glm) and mixed linear model (mlm) approaches. the population structure analysis revealed seven subpopulations in the entire collection (k=7). eleven marker trait associations (mta were identified on chromosomes 1h, 2h, 3h, 4h, and 7h , with significant associations found for markers bmag007, bmag6, bmac0399, bmag0125, and ebmac0701 with rwa resistance traits in both glm and mlm this study identified novel genomic regions putatively linked with rwa resistance traits, offering insights into the genetic architecture of rwa resist ance in barley. these findings may guide the utilization of rwa resistan t accessions of h . spontaneum as parents for barley breeding programs