Utilization of KASP technology for wheat improvement

Hundreds of experiments involving genotyping and phenotyping of the plants are planned daily by plant researchers worldwide for wheat improvement. There are a plethora of molecular markers available that are being widely used in wheat genetic studies but have their own limitations. Developments in the areas of next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics applications have aided in the development of SNP-based markers. SNP-based assays have revolutionized the method of genotyping as these consume less time and have high accuracy and effectiveness. Among the SNP genotyping platforms, kompetitive allele-specific PCR (KASP) assay is a promising technology for high throughput SNP genotyping which is based on the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) method. KASP genotyping mainly involves two allele-specific forward primers, one common reverse primer and FRET cassettes which results in the identification of respective alleles having a particular SNP or InDel. It is playing a significant role in performing various genetic studies such as genetic diversity analysis, genome-wide association studies and marker assisted selection in wheat. In this review, for the first time, we attempt to give an overview of the KASP assays developed for various biotic and abiotic stresses, agronomic, physiological and quality traits for wheat improvement and the assays developed for genetic diversity analysis and genotyping by sequencing.