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Wheat Information Service
Number 74: 1-3 (1992)


Review

A guide to the wheat aneuploids

Kozo Nishikawa

Gifu University, 1-1, Yanagido, Gifu 501-11, Japan

Thanks to the late Dr. E. R. Sears, the various aneuploid series have been available in common wheat, which are indispensable for cytogenetic studies. To avoid confusion, Sears (1975) defined aneuploids as "individuals with a changed number of chromosomes, chromosome arms, or centromeres, or with arms so arranged that normal pairing and disjunction can not occur at meiosis".


1. Types of aneuploids

Monosomics and trisomics were primarily isolated in offspring of haploid Chinese Spring wheat, from which nullisomics and tetrasomics were subsequently derived, respectively. General description and breeding behavior of these complete series of aneuploids and some other aberrations were summarized by Sears (1954). By means of several backcrosses of a certain common wheat cultivar to Chinese Spring monosomics, the monosomics of that cultivar have been developed. Worland (1988) compiled the catalogue of monosomic series. Using monosomics, nullisomics and tetrasomic, Sears was successful in obtaining 42 possible nullisomic-tetrasomic compensating combinations and several non-compensating ones in variety Chinese Spring, and reported their origin and characteristics (Sears 1966).

So called secondary aneuploids, telocentrics and isochromosomes are also available in the variety Chinese Spring. Sears and Sears (1978) reported telocentrics; their origin, designations, cytological behavior, fertility, morphology, uses and so on. Representative monosomics and deletion aneuploids were illustrated in
Figs1 and 2.

Much effort has been successfully devoted to develop the alien chromosome lines, alien chromosome additions and substitutions. Shepherd and Islam (1988) compiled the compendium of wheat-alien chromosome lines.

Various types of aneuploids in tetraploid wheat are also available (Joppa 1987).


2. Use of aneuploids

Wheat aneuploids have been used not only for genetic analyses but for developing the new aneuploids. There are several references in which methods and procedures of using wheat aneuploids in cytogenetic studies are demonstrated (Sears 1953, 1969, 1972, Kimber and Sears 1980, Law and Snape 1987. McIntosh 1987).

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