Abstract
For the purpose of broadening the available genetic resources to improve wheat breeding and to elucidate wheat evolution, 16 accessions of Aegilops tauschii newly collected in North Caucasia named NCT accessions were characterized genetically based on morphology, chloroplast SSR variation and AFLP. Ae. tauschii is one of the most important wild wheat genetic resources because it is the progenitor of the D genome of hexaploid wheat. Since Caucasia is considered to be a center of diversity of both cultivated and wild wheat, a lot of studies have been conducted to evaluate the diversity of Caucasian genetic resources including Ae. tauschii. Such kind of analyses, however, focused on Transcaucasia but little attention has been paid to North Caucasia because of the lack of available genetic resources. Based on the molecular analyses in this study, the 16 NCT accessions were generally divided into two groups although morphologically those are classified into the same subspecies. The grouping also represented geographical distribution, that is, the northern part group and Derbent group. This division is consistent with the two major genepools in Ae. tauschii reported in previous studies. The northern part and Derbent groups correspond to Eurasian wide genepool (called Tauschii genepool) and Caucasia and Caspian coast limited genepool (Strangulata genepool), respectively. Regarding to chloroplast, all the 16 accessions were genotyped as HG7, the most major haplogroup of the species. Although all the 16 NCT accessions were categorized into ssp. tauschii morphologically, accessions of Derbent group showed a tendency to have larger spikelets. Among them, especially NCT3 had the quite large size of spikelets and grains that are at almost the largest level in ssp. tauschii. The results of this study filled the missing information of Ae. tauschii and will be helpful for future utilization.
Highlights
The most cultivated wheat Triticum aestivum L. has the A, B and D genomes that has originated in the interspecific hybridization followed by polyploidization between tetraploid Emmer wheat T. turgidum L. and Aegilops tauschii Coss. [1] [2]
We evaluated the genetic diversity of these genetic resources based on morphological traits and two molecular techniques chloroplast SSR and AFLP that was used as a tool detecting the nuclear-based DNA variation
NCT2 showed the minimum values in glume length (5.34 mm), glume height (0.84 mm), spikelet length, grain width and grain length
Summary
The most cultivated wheat Triticum aestivum L. has the A, B and D genomes that has originated in the interspecific hybridization followed by polyploidization between tetraploid Emmer wheat T. turgidum L. and Aegilops tauschii Coss. [1] [2]. Ae. tauschii is a wild diploid goatgrass species with the DD genome and considered to be one of the most important genetic resources among wheat wild relatives because of its donation of the D genome to bread wheat. Ae. tauschii is distributing from Syria to western China throughout central part of Eurasian continent and inhabits various environmental conditions in dry grasslands, fallow, steppes, roadsides, woodlands, marginal forests and stony slopes, and even can be found in irrigated field and river valleys [3]. Ae. tauschii is divided into two subspecies, ssp. Subspecies tauschii has vertically elongated rectangle glumes and internodes between spikelets are not much constricted, on the other hand ssp. Strangulata has square or wide glumes and its internodes are markedly constricted. Subspecies tauschii is widely distributing throughout Eurasian continent, whereas ssp. Subspecies tauschii is widely distributing throughout Eurasian continent, whereas ssp. strangulata has a restricted distribution in Caucasia and coastal region of Caspian Sea in northern Iran
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