'Plant Breeding: Sustaining the Future' Abstracts of the XVIth EUCARPIA Congress, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10-14 September 2001 STUDY ON GENETIC DIVERSITY IN WILD DIPLOID WHEAT (Triticum tauschii ) USING SEED STORAGE PROTEINS ELECTROPHORESIS V. MOHAMMADI, S. ABDEMISHANI, P.AHMADIAN Dept. of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, The University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran

Triticum tauschii (Aegilops squarrosa; 2n=2x=14;DD) is unequivocally accepted as the D genome donor to Triticum aestivum . Variation of HMW - glutenin subunits was studied in 116 accessions of Triticum tauschii from different countries using SDS -PAGE . A wide variability for HMW glutenins was observed and fourteen Glu-D^t1 subunit combinations were found among different accessions. Containing 12 allelic variants, The accessions from Iran showed the highest polymorphism. Two new allelic variants (2+10.3 and 5.1+11) were recognized . 2+10 and 5.1+11 with 33.6 and 0.9 percent had the highest and the lowest relative frequency, respectively. The results provided no proof for the allelic adaptiveness of seed storage proteins. High variability and having subunits are not present in hexaploid wheat indicates that T. tauschii accessions can be used for enhancing the genetic variation of bread wheat.