Researchers from Skoltech, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, the Research Centre for Cereal and Industrial Crops in Italy, and other international organizations have developed new durum wheat lines capable of surviving freezing temperatures while maintaining the grain quality required for premium pasta production. The study, published in the Frontiers in Plant Science journal, presents a new breeding framework that could help make durum wheat production more resilient to climate variability.

Durum wheat is the primary raw material used to produce pasta worldwide, yet it remains highly vulnerable to sudden freezing events. As climate variability increases, unpredictable cold spells pose a growing risk to wheat production. At the same time, breeders must preserve the high gluten quality that gives pasta its characteristic texture and cooking properties.

To address this challenge, the research team analyzed 250 durum wheat accessions from across Europe, integrating genomic and phenotypic data to identify key genetic regions controlling freezing tolerance and grain quality. The analysis revealed a clear genetic division between Southern European varieties, bred primarily for pasta quality, and Eastern European accessions, adapted to colder climates.

The researchers paid particular attention to a well-characterized genetic region on chromosome 5A, corresponding to the Fr-A2 locus, which plays a major role in freezing tolerance and explained more than a quarter of the variation in cold survival between different wheat varieties. They also confirmed a genetic marker linked to gluten strength, a key trait for pasta quality. Building on these findings, the researchers applied multi-trait genomic selection, using genome-wide marker information to predict the performance of breeding lines, and combined this with simulated crosses to identify optimal parental combinations. This approach allowed them to select the best parental pairs before field evaluation, significantly reducing the need for trial-and-error breeding which costs huge money and time. Notably, this represents one of the first implementations of genomic selection integrated into a practical breeding pipeline for durum wheat in Russia.

“The approach was validated in real breeding populations, where molecular markers from genome-wide association studies were used to identify progeny lines carrying favorable alleles for both freezing tolerance and gluten strength. The results confirmed that the genomic breeding pipeline can successfully combine these traits, providing a scalable strategy for developing climate-resilient durum wheat,” commented Junior Research Scientist Yawar Habib from the Skoltech Biomed Technologies Center, the lead author of the paper, who came to study at Skoltech from India and graduated from the Agrobiotechnologies and Engineering PhD program. 

As a result of the study, approximately 60 new durum wheat lines were selected that combine cold tolerance with superior gluten properties. This work represents an important step toward developing varieties capable of ensuring stable production of high-quality pasta in the face of increasing climate instability. The proposed methodology can also be applied to improve other complex traits in agricultural crops.