|
The improved wheats C. 591 and. N.P. 90 appeared to be of this type also,
and it may be noted that neither of the parents of C. 591, Punjab 8B and
Punjab 9, showed any glume fertility below the second spikelet. Association with other characters : The presence of awns or tip awns and the level of glume hairiness were recorded. For India and Pakistan as a whole the percentages of awned wheats were 67 and 65 respectively, but all the wheats from Indore and Loralai, most from Kashmir, none from Bihar and only three from Nepal-Bhutan were awned. There was no constant association between awnedness and glume fertility. Proportions of wheats with hairy glumes also varied considerably. The separate Pakistani samples varied from a third to a half, averaging 43 percent with hairy glumes, while the average for the mountain regions was 18 percent, for the northern foothills 26 percent, and for the remainder of India 7 percent. In Afghanistan (WRIGHT 1972. Table 6) there were few wheats with hairy glumes in the more accessible regions, and these had lower glume fertility scores than those with smooth glumes, while in the high valleys hairyglumed wheats were more common but both types had low scores. The comparisons in Table 2 show a very similar pattern of association of the two characters in India and Afghanistan. Classing northern Bihar, with the four early Pusa wheats, as inaccessible was admittedly influenced by their low average score (Table 1), and without these the averages for "North of India" are 1.00 and 0.63. The averages for the Pakistani wheats agree reasonably well also, provided the Sind lines are excluded. The unusual pattern of glume fertility shown by the Sind wheats was noted above, and it may be added that combining the wheats from Chagai and Las Bela in Baluchistan gives a two-way table for terminal spikelet scores and glume hairiness similar to that for Sind (2, 1, 2, 3; 7, 2, 1, 3 compared with 2, 0, 1, 5; 7, 4, 1, 4). Discussion An explanation of the origin and general distribution of wheats with flower parts in the axils of glumes, or glume fertility, and its slight association with glume hairiness, was suggested by Wright (1972). The present results are in general agreement with those previously reported, particularly those from the Afghan wheats. They suggest that the principal route of the more recent primitive wheats from their area of origin to the Indian subcontinent was across the Arabian sea rather than over land. To establish this more firmly it would be necessary to have samples of primitive wheats from Gujarat and Maharashtra, which should have high levels of glume fertility, and it would be desirable to be able to confirm that the Sind wheats included a substantial proportion obtained from distant parts of Baluchistan or the North-west Frontier, to explain the number of low-scoring lines among them. Literature cited PAL, B. P. 1966. Wheat. Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi. WRIGHT, G. M. 1969. A developmentally unstable character in wheat : glume fertility. New Zealand J. Botany 7: 30-35. WRIGHT, G. M. 1972. Fertile glumes in primitive cultivated wheats. Evolution 26: 415-426. (Received Oct. 20, 1972) |
| <-- Back |