| Protein electrophoretic patterns of Transcaucasian
wheats J. Giles WAINES Department of Genetics, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65201, U.S.A.1) Seeds of five separate, wild, collections of Triticum araraticum JAKUBZ. were provided by the All Union Institute of Plant Industry. The Leningrad accession numbers and their place of collection are as follows: K-28132; T. araraticum var. thumaniani JAKUBZ. Near Erevan, Armenia. K-28244; T. araraticum var. thumaniani and var. nachischevanicum JAKUBZ. Nakhichevan Republic. K-30210; T. araraticum var. thumaniani. Nakhichevan Republic. K-30216; T. araraticum var. nachischevanicum. Nakhichevan Republic. K-39098; T. araraticum var. thumaniani. Azerbaijan. Alcohol extracts of single seeds were electrophoresed following the technique of JOHNSON (Science 158: 131-132, 1967) and the whole experiment repeated several times. Accessions K-28244 and K-30210 gave protein spectra similar to that exhibited for T. dicoccum by JOHNSON in the above paper, while the other three accessions gave spectra similar to that exhibited for T. timopheevi. as expected. Triticum dicoccum has the same protein spectrum as the wild Syrio-Palestinian T. dicoccoides (JOHNSON 1967). Although these accessions have yet to be crossed and the meiotic chromosome behaviour of their hybrids investigated, these results indicate that plants with a protein pattern similar to the Syrio-Palestinian T. dicoccoides are native to the Transcaucasus region and that they are morphologically similar to T. araraticum. Recently, TANAKA and ISHIKAWA (Genetics 60: 229, 1968) identified two types of T. araraticum. The first type formed fertile hybrids with T. timopheevi, while the second type did not. NISHIKAWA and SAWAI (W.I.S. No. 29: 2-3, 1969) measured the relative amounts of nuclear DNA in these two types and found that the first type had an amount of DNA similar to T. timopheevi, while the second type approached the DNA content of T. dicoccum-type wheats. Thus, the tetraploid wheats of the Transcacasus area appear to be a heterogeneous group, and there is the possibility that the Syrio-Palestinian race of T. dicoccoides is native there also. A single collection of T. ururtu TUM., (K-33870, Armenia) was investigated using the same techniques. Its protein pattern was similar to Fig. 1 (E) of JOHNSON'S above paper, except that it had three dense fast moving bands, migrating between 7 and 10 cm, rather than one. (Received August 17, 1970) |
| 1) Present address : The Botany School, Oxford OX1 3RA, England. |