A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO CHARACTERIZE TRITICALE ELITE LINES FOR INDUSTRIAL USES

Abstract

Plant biomass and organic wastes from agriculture represent an effective resource to be exploited fora sustainable rural development, optimizing the land use, diversifying rural entrepreneurship, producing energyand new income.Among crops, triticale is considered particularly interesting, showing several advantages such as highgrain yield even in marginal environments, tolerance to drought, tolerance to more acid soils, lower productioncosts and lower susceptibility to biotic stresses.In the frame of a long collaboration with CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center-MX), eight triticale elite lines from Mexico were grown in Italy using marginal lands. An Italian triticalevariety and a bread wheat line, specifically bred for bioenergy applications, were used for comparison. Overthree growing seasons, different agronomic evaluations were obtained harvesting at milk phase. In the thirdgrowing season, a set of parcels was harvested also at maturity, to evaluate grain yields and quality parametersfrom seeds.Milk phase biomass were properly dried and characterized following reference procedures, then used assubstrate for anaerobic digestion to produce biogas and methane in lab-scale experiments.Seeds from interesting lines were used to test different quality parameters including falling number inorder to evaluate the fermentation ability. RAPD technique by two different panels of primers was used togenotype a selection of lines.