CROP WILD RELATIVES

Plant height plays an important role in the potential and stability of crop yields and represents one of the most important agronomic traits of wheat. Although more than 30 dwarfing genes have been identified in wheat, only a few are used in wheat breeding, which has narrowed the genetic basis of newly developed varieties. Therefore, continually identifying new dwarfing genes is required to produce improved wheat cultivars. TA001 is a new germplasm line marked by reduced plant height and early maturation, and it was derived from a hybridization between the common wheat Yannong 15 and the Aegilops ventricosa × Aegilops cylindrica amphiploid SDAU18. In this study, cytological observations, agronomic trait examinations, genomic in situ hybridization (GISH), multicolor genomic in situ hybridization (mc-GISH), multicolor fluorescence in situ hybridization (mc-FISH), SSR analysis and seed storage protein electrophoresis were combined to determine the cytological stability, main agronomic traits, chromosomal constituents and seed storage protein subunits of TA001. Twenty-one bivalents were observed in most of the pollen mother cells at metaphase I (PMCs MI) in TA001, which housed 42 chromosomes, and the chromosomes in most pollen mother cells at anaphase I (PMCs AI) displayed 21/21 segregation. Twenty bivalents plus two univalents were simultaneously observed in most of the PMCs MI of the hybrid F₁ between TA001 and Yannong 15. TA001 possessed all chromosomes from genomes A, B and D except for chromosome 7B, which was replaced by one pair of N-genome chromosomes from Aegilops ventricosa. Several pairs of chromosomes in TA001 exhibited different FISH patterns from the equivalent chromosomes in Yannong 15. TA001 housed alien genetic materials from Aegilops ventricosa and Aegilops cylindrica and possessed new glutenin and gliadin subunits specific to SDAU18, as revealed by molecular marker analysis and protein electrophoresis respectively.