The wild wheat Aegilops tauschii Coss. has extensive natural variation available for breeding of common wheat. Drought stress tolerance is closely related to abscisic acid (ABA) sensitivity. In this study, 17 synthetic hexaploid wheat lines, produced by crossing the tetraploid wheat cultivar Langdon with 17 accessions of Ae. tauschii, were used for comparative analysis of natural variation in d...

Cereal Chern. 76(5):650-655 Soft red and white winter wheats from the eastern United States, used primarily to produce cookies, cakes, and biscuits, have quality requirements very different from those of bread wheats. In general, soft wheats have been bred to have low protein content, and conventional wisdom has been that protein composition of soft wheat is relatively unimportant. To test this...

The geographic distribution of genetic diversity and the population structure of tetraploid wheat landraces in the Mediterranean basin has received relatively little attention. This is complicated by the lack of consensus concerning the taxonomy of tetraploid wheats and by unresolved questions regarding the domestication and spread of naked wheats. These knowledge gaps hinder crop diversity con...

Wheat allergy occurs by inhalation (baker’s asthma) and ingestion (food allergy), but may also develop by contact in some cases. The responsible allergens of wheat are proteins accounting for about 10-15% of the grain dry weight. Wheat proteins are divided into two groups: the salt soluble fraction (albumins/globulins) and the gluten proteins (gliadins and glutenins). This latter group is respo...

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) flour properties necessary for optimal tortilla production have not been identified. Transgenic wheats (Triticum aestivum L.) overexpressing high molecular weight glutenin subunit (HMW-GS) 1Dy10 were used to make tortilla and their quality was evaluated. The level of HMW-GS 1Dy10 in flours derived from transgenic wheats was 2.5-5.8-fold greater than in controls. Pol...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Most plant scientists, in contrast to animal scientists, study only half the organism, namely above-ground stems, leaves, flowers and fruits, and neglect below-ground roots. Yet all acknowledge roots are important for anchorage, water and nutrient uptake, and presumably components of yield. This paper investigates the relationship between domestication, and the root systems ...

Experiments on the Rothamsted and Woburn Experimental Farms studied the effects on take-all of different break crops and of set-aside/conservation covers that interrupted sequences of winter wheat. There was no evidence for different effects on take-all of the break crops per se but the presence of volunteers, in crops of oilseed rape, increased the amounts of take-all in the following wheat. S...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Intra- and interspecific variations of C-values and the relationship between habitat factors and genome size were studied in natural populations of diploid and tetraploid wild wheats. METHODOLOGY The 1C nuclear DNA content of 376 individual plants representing 41 populations of diploid and tetraploid wild wheats was determined by flow cytometry (FCM) and correlated with ge...