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Wheat. Information
Service Number 88: 27-31 (1999)
Research article

Transfer of Triticum urartu cytoplasm to emmer wheat is difficult, if not impossible

Koichiro Tsunewaki¹, Takiko Shimada² and Yoshihiro Maitsuoka<sup>1

1</sup>Fukui Prefectural University, Matsuoka, Yoshida-gun, Fukui 910-1195, Japan
²Ishikawa Agricultural College, Nonoichi-machi, Ishikawa-gun, Ishikawa 921-8836, Japan


Summary

Although the transfer of Triticum boeoticum cytoplasm to emmer wheat by successive backcrosses of the F₁hybrid, T. boeoticum x emmer wheat, with emmer wheat as recurrent pollen parent was easy, no viable F₁ hybrid was obtained between T. urartu as female and emmer wheat, even with the aid of embryo rescue technique. T. urartu when used as female showed strong cross incompatibility to emmer wheat; a newly revealed aspect of the genetic differentiation between T. urartu and T. boeoticum.

Key words: T. urartu, T. boeoticum, Emmer wheat, Cytoplasm transfer, Cross incompatibility

Introduction

There is a general agreement in the opinion that Triticum urartu (2n=2x=14, genome constitution AA) provided the A genome to both groups of tetraploid wheat, Emmer and Timopheevi (Konarev 1983; Nishikawa 1983; Dvorak et al. 1988; Galili et al. 1991; Takumi et al. 1993). We have studied plasmon diversity among Triticum and Aegilops species, including two einkorn species, T. boeoticum and T. monococcum, by producing alloplasmic lines of common wheat having their cytoplasms (see Tsunewaki 1996 for review). Similar works have been carried out by many other researchers, such as Maan (1975) and Panayotov (1983). Those works revealed the plasmon differentiation among diploid species and the descent of plasmons in polyploid species. No people, however, has succeeded in producing alloplasmic lines of polyploid wheat having the cytoplasm of T. urartu, and no genetic characterization of its cytoplasm has been done so far. It is important to know whether the cytoplasm of T. urartu is similar to or very different from those of polyploid wheats in determination of their female parent, and clarification of the plasmon differentiation in diploid wheats.

Last three years we attempted to introduce the cytoplasm of T. urartu to emmer wheat, but failed. In this article, the results of our attempt are presented and compared with those of our old, comparable investigation, in which cytoplasm of the other wild einkorn wheat, T. boeoticum, successfully was transferred to emmer wheat (Hori and Tsunewaki 1967).

Materials and methods

Plant materials
Two species of einkorn wheat (2n = 2x = 14, genome constitution AA), and three species of emmer wheat (2n = 4x = 28, AABB) were used. Einkorn species used were T. boeoticum (ssp. aegilopoides) and T. urartu var. albonigrum (accession KU 199-6), and those of emmer wheat were T. dicoccum (two cultivars, Vernal and Hokudai), T. durum (two varieties, melanopus and rechenbachii, and cv. Langdon) and T. turgidum (var. nigrobarbatum ). Both einkorn species were crossed as female to emmer wheat. Viable F₁ hybrids obtained from the cross, T. boeoticum x emmer wheat, were backcrossed two times with emmer wheat as the recurrent pollen parent.

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