Variation in Root System Architecture among the Founder Parents of Two 8-way MAGIC Wheat Populations for Selection in Breeding

Root system architecture (RSA) is a target for breeding crops with effective nutrient and water use. Breeding can use populations designed to map quantitative trait loci (QTL). Here we non-invasively phenotype roots leaves of the 16 foundation parents two multi-parent advanced generation inter-cross (MAGIC) populations, covering diversity in spring (CSIRO MAGIC) winter (NIAB wheats. RSA components varied after days upgraded, paper-based imaging platform, GrowScreen-PaGe: lateral root length 2.2 fold; total length, 1.9 seminal angle 1.2 fold. had highest heritabilities (H2) (H2 = 0.4 CSIRO NIAB parents) good repeatability (r 0.7) GrowScreen-PaGe. These be combined leaf 0.8 CSIRO; 0.7 NIAB) number 0.6 identify shoot QTL breed wheats vigorous growth at establishment, critical phase crop productivity. Time resolved phenotyping MAGIC also revealed cross future rate traits (fastest: Robigus–NIAB AC Barrie–CSIRO; slowest Rialto–NIAB G204 Xiaoyan54–CSIRO) root: allocation (fast growers grew roots, notably laterals, quicker than leaves, compared slow growers).