INSTITUTE OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY AT THE ESTONIAN AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY
Department of Plant Genetics, 76902, Harku, Harjumaa, Estonia.
O. Priilinn, T. Enno, and H. Peusha.
Maintaining, evaluating, and exploiting the wild and cultivated wheat species in gene banks is an important task of wheat geneticists and breeders and should be regarded with international significance.
Our Institute possesses of a collection of diploid and tetraploid wheat accessions, provided by the VIR (Institute of Plant Industry, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation) that includes T. monococcum subsp. monococcum, five accessions; T. turgidum subsp. dicoccoides, one accession; T. turgidum subsp. dicoccum, one accession; T. turgidum subsp. durum, two accessions; T. turgidum subsp. persicum, three accessions; T. timopheevii subsp. timopheevii, one accession; and T. turgidum subsp. militinae, one accession. These species are sources of genes for use in wheat improvement as donors of new genes for disease resistance, higher protein, and other agronomically important traits.
Our collection also includes the set of 21 monosomic lines of Chinese Spring wheat, which has been used as the recipient tester cultivar for genetic analysis of common wheat varieties; the NILs of Chancellor and Thatcher with known genes for resistance to powdery mildew and leaf rust, respectively; and the ph1b mutant stock that is deficient for the pairing suppressor Ph1, pairing homoeologous locus.
Introgressed hybrid wheat lines (about 50) were selected in the progenies of the wide crosses between bread wheat cultivars and related wheat species including T. turgidum subspp. timopheevii, militinae, and dicoccum, and Ae. speltoides, which were used as donors of disease resistance. Monosomic analysis and molecular-genetic techniques were used to locate and identify powdery mildew-resistance genes in these wheat lines. Chromosomes involved in reciprocal translocations were identified by cytogenetical analysis at meiosis. Evaluating, describing, characterizing, documenting, and preserving the most valuable 10 wheat lines began in 2002. The available data will be stored in the Gene Bank at the Jõgeva Plant Breeding Institute in 2003 to ensure long-term preservation of the wheat assessions in accordance with the state program 'Collection and Preservation of the Agricultural Genetical Resources in 2002-2006'.
Acknowledgment. This work is carried out with financial support from Ministry of Agriculture and Estonian Science Foundation (grant 4720).