Abstract
The cytogenetic study of wide hybrids of wheat has both practical and fundamental values. Partial wheat-wheatgrass hybrids (WWGHs) are interesting as a breeding bridge to confer valuable genes to wheat genome, as well as a model object that contains related genomes of Triticeae. The development of cytogenetic markers is a process that requires long and laborious fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) testing of various probes before a suitable probe is found. In this study, we aimed to find an approach that allows to facilitate this process. Based on the data sequencing of Thinopyrum ponticum, we selected six tandem repeat (TR) clusters using RepeatExplorer2 pipeline and designed primers for each of them. We estimated the found TRs’ abundance in the genomes of Triticum aestivum, Thinopyrum ponticum, Thinopyrum intermedium and four different WWGH accessions using real-time qPCR, and localized them on the chromosomes of the studied WWGHs using fluorescence in situ hybridization. As a result, we obtained three tandem repeat cytogenetic markers that specifically labeled wheatgrass chromosomes in the presence of bread wheat chromosomes. Moreover, we designed and tested primers for these repeats, and demonstrated that they can be used as qPCR markers for quick and cheap monitoring of the presence of certain chromosomes of wheatgrass in breeding programs.
Highlights
Cultivated wheat is the second most important food crop, providing calories and nutrients for up to one third of the world population
Local landraces (e.g., Banatka, Beloturka, Poltavka, Kubanka, Arnautka, and others for the former USSR) were more heterogeneous in genetic composition, which had a number of advantages: greater plasticity of the genomes that make up their high adaptivity to local conditions and tolerance to abiotic stress [3,4,5]
The genetic diversity of wheat shifted towards European germplasm, especially in Asian countries, and was accompanied by the loss of the local old varieties [2,5,6,7]
Summary
Cultivated wheat is the second most important food crop, providing calories and nutrients for up to one third of the world population. Before the Green Revolution, wheat was cultivated mainly (with few exceptions) as landraces [1,2]. As a result of modern breeding, most landraces were replaced by high-yielding disease, and lodging resistant (but genetically homogeneous) cultivars. The introgression of agronomically valuable traits from the Triticeae wild species via wide hybridization has been proved to be one of the efficient tools to enrich wheat gene repertoire [6,8,9]. Thinopyrum (wheatgrass) species are widely used in wide hybridization of wheat as donors of tolerance to adverse conditions and disease resistance [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]
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