Exploration of wheat wild relative diversity from Lahaul valley: a cold arid desert of Indian Himalayas

Abstract

Climate change is causing a huge loss in biodiversity throughout the globe and the rate has accelerated in recent years. Plant diversity of temperate regions has continuously suffered due to this. The importance of conservation of wild relatives/species of staple crop such as Elymus, Leymus, Thinopyrum, Lolium either in situ or ex situ is essential to sustain these resources for future use due to their ability to withstand in a stressful environment. Thus plant researchers are always in a quest to explore novel species to enhance the genetic diversity of wild crop relatives to improve the resilience of staple crops to a wide range of stress conditions. Keeping these viewpoints in mind, in 2016–2018, we have explored the Lahaul valley, a cold arid region of District Lahaul and Spiti, Himachal Pradesh. A total of 230 accessions of four different species belonging to genus Elymus viz-E. semicostatus (Nees ex steud.) Meld., E. repens Gould, E. dahuricus Turrcz Ex Griseb. and E. longiaristatus (Boiss.) Tzvelev subsp. Canaliculatus (Nevski) Tzvelev belonging to the family Poaceae, tribe Triticeae were taken into consideration. Wide-range of variability was observed at an inter-and intraspecific level among these species. The variations in morphological characters at different ecological amplitudes were recorded. The presence of variation in abiotic stress tolerance traits such as spike pigmentation, low seed shattering, dense pubescence, waxiness was observed. Forty traits were recorded during field evaluation to ease wheat breeders and researchers to identify germplasm during the collection at an in situ level. The population of these four species had a variation for qualitative and quantitative traits at different ecological regimes at their native habitat suggesting their adaptability to a particular niche. Pre-breeding on these germplasm resources could be initiated for introgression novel alleles in wheat to mitigate environmental constraints posed by changing climate.