Phenotypic and Molecular Characterization of the National Bread Wheat Genetic Resource Collection

The national bread wheat collection, comprising 1,783 French accessions, was evaluated over three years for ten agro-morphological traits across multiple private breeding sites and genotyped at 42 microsatellite loci. ANOVA highlighted significant genotype and year effects on heading date, plant height, spike characteristics, and lodging susceptibility, while an empirical selection index defined panels resistant to five major diseases. Molecular diversity analysis confirmed high neutral polymorphism and a collection structure influenced by registration year. A preliminary association genetics approach revealed 130 significant marker-trait associations (p<0.001). The entire dataset is being integrated into the SIReGaL database for public access and breeding use.