“…Agronomic and morphological data have been widely used to screen wheat varieties that are tolerant to stress, including drought (Ali et al, 2013), rust (Singh et al, 2005;Afzal et al, 2008;Luo et al, 2009;Chen et al, 2014), salinity (Zafar et al, 2015), and spot blotch (Jamil et al, 2018). Molecular markers were extensively used to evaluate the genetic diversity and population structure of wheat germplasm (Du et al, 2002;Khan et al, 2005;Ahmed et al, 2010;Akhunov et al, 2010;Sobia et al, 2010;van Poecke et al, 2013;Manickavelu et al, 2014;Zeshan et al, 2016). Studies using randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers demonstrate narrow genetic backgrounds in most varieties introduced by the same research institutes (Mukhtar et al, 2002;Ahmed et al, 2010).…”