Seed dormancy is either tightly linked or pleiotropically controlled by seed color in wheat because most of the red-seeded wheats are tolerant to pre-harvest sprouting in comparison to white seeded-wheats. Seed color in hexaploid wheat is controlled by dominant red seed color genes R-A₁, R-B₁, and R-D₁ that are located in orthologous positions on chromosome arms 3AL, 3BL and 3DL, respectively. Previous mapping efforts showed that R loci were mapped in an 8-12 cM interval flanked by orthologous alleles of RFLP markers Xbcd131 and Xabc174 on chromosome arm 3L. By using wheat ESTs and synteny with rice, we identified one co-segregating STS marker and one closely linked EST marker to R-A₁ in an RIL population of Langdon x Langdon (dic 3A). Physical mapping of the R-A₁ gene using tightly linked markers on a set of deletion lines specific to the long arms of group-3 chromosomes indicated that the red seed color genes are located in the distal region (less than 10% of the chromosome arms 3L), which is a high-recombination, gene-rich region in wheat. A high-resolution mapping population of 1,200 F₂ plants from the above mentioned cross and 450 F₂ plants from a cross between Langdon x Langdon (dic 3B) is being used for fine mapping of the red seed color gene(s) in wheat.