TITLE:
Genetic Characterization of Genetic Resources of Aegilops tauschii, Wheat D Genome Donor, Newly Collected in North Caucasia
AUTHORS:
Ayaka Kakizaki, Taihachi Kawahara, Mikhail Alexandrovich Zhuk, Tamara Nikolaevna Smekalova, Kazuhiro Sato, Toshinori Abe, Tsuneo Sasanuma
KEYWORDS:
Aegilops tauschii, North Caucasia, Spikelet Morphology, Chloroplast SSR, AFLP
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.8 No.11,
October
24,
2017
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.