Development and validation of molecular markers closely linked to the wheat stripe rust resistance gene YrC591 for marker-assisted selection

Stripe rust resistance gene YrC591, present in wheat cultivar C591, is effective against currently important Puccinia striiformis Westend. f. sp. tritici isolates in China. An F-2:3 population (127 lines) was developed by crossing C591 with susceptible cultivar Taichung 29. Thirty four simple sequence repeat (SSR) and 155 sequence tagged site (STS) markers located on chromosome 7BL were used to perform bulk segregant analysis. Eight SSR markers, cfa2040, wmc273, wmc166, gwm984, barc32 wmc276, barc182 and gwm146, and 6 STS markers, mag1714, mag1757, mag1811, BE425120, BE471173 and BG607810, were polymorphic between the parents and contrasting resistant and susceptible DNA pools. F-2:3 lines were genotyped with these polymorphic markers. Linkage analysis indicated that YrC591 was flanked by Xmag1714 and Xbarc182 with genetic distances of 1.2 and 0.4 cM, respectively. In addition, validation of the SSR markers cfa2040, wmc273 and barc32, and STS markers mag1714 and BE425120 was carried out using wheat lines with C591 as a parent, indicating that these markers should be effective in tracing this gene in marker-assisted selection.