Abstract:

Accompanying the elevated expenses on consumption, people’s urge upon food has been gradually changed from “eat to be fed” to “eat to be satisfied” and further to “eat to gain nutrition” and “eat to be healthy”. Accordingly, breeders considered the wheat breeding goals should be set as breeding wheat with better quality along with higher yield, wherein the phrase “functional wheat variety” was recently raised. Flavonoids comprise one of the most widely reported categories of metabolites, the contents of which have been included within the “functional wheat variety” breeding program for its connection with plant phenotypes and its contribution to human health. The combination of metabolomics approach and genetics design has been proved to be efficient in identifying the candidates that responsible for metabolite contents, that said its application in wheat was lagged behind due to the lately released wheat reference genome. Further, the deficient knowledge upon the genetic basis of metabolites has in turn constrained the application of breeding “functional wheat variety”. In the current manuscript, the research progresses on genetic basis of flavonoids are briefly summarized, and its application for wheat breeding is highlighted. Meanwhile, the metabolomics-assisted breeding frame is concepted. Ultimately, the “functional wheat variety” breeding program will be achieved through the combination of the fundamental researches and breeding applications.

Key words: flavonoid, functional wheat, genetic basis, breeding