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Scientific Film
Series 3
Origin of Wheat
Ministry of Education
Japan |
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By
Dr. Hitoshi Kihara
Professor of Genetics
Kyoto University
and his Collaborators |
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The subject of this film is the search
for the ancestors of bread wheat, Triticum vulgare, which took
35 years of continuous studies carried out by Professor Kihara and
his collaborators. |
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From where comes the wheat, the blessed
grass which gives us our bread ? Nobody knows . ......J. Henri Fabre
|
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The epochmaking period in the study of
wheats began in 1918. |
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In this year the right chromosome numbers
in the genus Triticum were determined. |
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According to Sakamura, all wheat species
can be divided into three groups with different chromosome numbers.
Sax reported similar results. |
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Formerly it was assumed that all wheat
species have the same chromosome number, namely 8 haploid and 11 diploid
chromosomes. |
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The findings of Sakamura were confirmed
by many later studies. Here you see the chromosomes of the three groups, |
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as observed by Kihara in the pollen mother
cells. 7, 14 |
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and 21 chromosomes can be easily counted. |
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In the somatic cells of those groups were
found accordingly 14, |
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28 and |
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42 chromosomes. |
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Among wheats both wild and cultivated types
are known. To the most advanced type belongs our bread wheat with
a tough, firm ear and easily threshing grain. |
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In more primitive types the ear can be
also firm but the grains are not so easily threshed, while the wild
types have an easily disarticulating ear and husked grains.
Unbreakable ears and naked grains......characters,
which have been acquired under cultivations since ancient times, are
adaptations to man's needs. |