title: Applicability of Aegilops tauschii drought tolerance traits to breeding of hexaploid wheat.
abstract: Few genes are available to develop drought-tolerant bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars. One way to enhance bread wheat's genetic diversity would be to take advantage of the diversity of wild species by creating synthetic hexaploid wheat (SW) with the genomic constitution of bread wheat. In this study, we compared the expression of traits encoded at different ploidy levels and evaluated the applicability of Aegilops tauschii drought-related traits using 33 Ae. tauschii accessions along with their corresponding SW lines under well-watered and drought conditions. We found wide variation in Ae. tauschii, and even wider variation in the SW lines. Some SW lines were more drought-tolerant than the standard cultivar Cham 6. Aegilops tauschii from some regions gave better performing SW lines. The traits of Ae. tauschii were not significantly correlated with their corresponding SW lines, indicating that the traits expressed in wild diploid relatives of wheat may not predict the traits that will be expressed in SW lines derived from them. We suggest that, regardless of the adaptability and performance of the Ae. tauschii under drought, production of SW could probably result in genotypes with enhanced trait expression due to gene interactions, and that the traits of the synthetic should be evaluated in hexaploid level.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Molecular Breeding, Arid Land Research Center, Tottori University , 1390 Hamasaka, Tottori 680-0001, Japan.
authors.forename: Quahir
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Sohail
authors.forename: Tomoe
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Inoue
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.forename: Amin Elsadig
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Eltayeb
authors.forename: Yoshihiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Matsuoka
authors.forename: Hisashi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tsujimoto
keywords: Aegilops tauschii; synthetic hexaploid wheat; wheat; wild relatives of wheat