Study of the LMW glutenin composition of some old Hungarian wheat cultivars using capillary electrophoresis

Abstract

The LMW glutenin composition of nine old Hungarian wheats (several lines per variety), and one Canadian wheat was studied using one-step, one-dimensional SDS-PAGE (Gupta and MacRitchie, 1991), after which a method was developed for the determination of wheat LMW glutenin patterns using SDS capillary electrophoresis (CE). In both cases the samples were prepared as described by Gupta and MacRitchie (1991), with some modifications in the case of CE. Both methods were used to analyse the homogeneity of the varieties, and the electropherograms obtained with the two methods were compared. It was found that the new method based on CE was suitable for the demonstration of differences and similarities between the wheat LMW glutenins. The method can be used to reveal differences not only between varieties (e.g. between the Hungarian variety Bankuti 1205 and the Canadian variety Marquis), but also between the genotypes making up a variety population (e.g. the sublines of Bankuti 1205). The results indicate that CE is a satisfactory alternative to the traditional PAGE method for the determination of the LMW glutenin subunits of wheat varieties.