Biofortified wheat can help fulfil the dietary requirements of human populations living in the developing world, especially in South Asia. Wheat production is limited by rust diseases, which have the potential to cause AUD 1 billion worth of losses in Australia alone. The Harvest Plus Association Mapping Panel (HPAM) was evaluated in Australia for micronutrient concentration and resistance to rust diseases. This panel was genotyped using Illumina iselect 90K Infinium SNP array. Genome-wide association mapping was performed to identify genomic regions underpinning rust resistance and micronutrient concentration. Nineteen marker-trait associations (MTAs) for grain Zinc and Iron content and thirty-five new MTAs for resistance to stripe rust, leaf rust and stem rust were identified.Three MTAs on chromosome 1B, 2A and 3D were common for mineral concentration and rust resistance. The MTAs are being validated using multi-year field data. Biofortified wheat varieties are being grown in India and Bangladesh. Our findings validated the presence of the 2NS segment associated with blast resistance in these varieties via linkage to the rust resistance genes Sr38, Lr37 and Yr17.
