'Plant Breeding: Sustaining the Future' Abstracts of the XVIth EUCARPIA Congress, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10-14 September 2001 GENETIC DIVERSITY AMONG HUNGARIAN WINTER WHEAT CULTIVARS L. LANG, Z. BEDÖ Agricultural Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, H2462 Martonvásár, PO Box 19, Hungary

In the course of the research the International Crop Information System (ICIS) software developed by CIMMYT/IRRI was used for the pedigree analysis of the degree of relationship between the 124 winter wheat varieties with known pedigrees registered in Hungary between 1957 and 2000. The ancestors of the varieties were known over the last 9–25 generations.  The mean Coefficient of Parentage (COP) between the wheat varieties registered in Hungary over the last 43 years was 0.108, while this figure was 0.167 for the Martonvásár varieties. The latest varieties have a broader genetic basis and are less closely related than those bred in the 70s. While the varieties occupying the larger part of the sowing area were closely related to each other between 1955 and 1975, the genetic diversity of the leading varieties has now increased substantially.  The 46 Martonvásár wheat varieties registered between 1971 and 2000 stem from a total of 157 parental lines. Twenty-three varieties make up 75 % of the genetic background of the Martonvásár varieties. Judging by the mendellgrams of the varieties, the genotypes Ukrainka (9.8%), Mironovskaya 808 (7.2%), Akagomughi 96.5%) and Kanred (5.3%) make up the greatest proportion of the pedigrees, while Colonista, Bezostaya Dwarf, Rieti, Riley 67, Fulz, Lancaster, Barleta 7D, Klein Universal and Ranka III also contribute considerably to the genetic composition of the varieties.