Focusing on the significant QTL regions identified that high-confidence genes TraesCS1B02G324300 on 1B, TraesCS6B02G017900 on 6B, TraesCS7A02G175200 on 7A and TraesCS7D02G016800 on 7D regulate mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades, which are involved in signaling a variety of plant defense responses against pathogen infections (Meng and Zhang, 2013) (Supplementary Table 6). Here, WNK2 is linked to infection.