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The reported high levels of chromosome pairing in hybrids of common wheat (Chinese Spring) with spelta wheat suggested that common wheat and spelta have a common origin (Riley et al. 1967). They found that the F1's between common wheat and spelta or vavilovii showed only a single chromosome translocation, however, F1's between common wheat and macha showed two translocations in metaphase I of meiosis. In the current study, translocations were not found between common wheat and spelta, vavilovii or macha. However, most F1's involving macha had relatively poor chromosome pairing. This would suggest that macha is distantly related to common wheat, spelta and vavilovii. Sachs (1953) found an average of 20.60 bivalents/cell in the F1 of spelta with vavilovii, 18.75 in the F1 of vavilovii with macha and 18.66 in the F1 of spelta with macha, indicating that spelta and vavilovii are more closely related to each other than they are to macha wheat. In the present study, the mean number of bivalents/cell was 20.92 in the F1 of common wheat with vavilovii, 20.61 in the F1 of vavilovii with macha and 20.45 in the F1 of common wheat with macha. The dendrogram (Fig. 1) based on C-value coefficients suggests that common wheat is most closely re related to vavilovii followed by spelta and SWW, and least related to macha. However, Ph gene might affect chromosome pairing. The genetic relationships among these five groups of wheat need to be conformed by modern tools, such as random amplified polymorphic, DNA, amplified fragment length polymorphism etc.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. George Fedak for critical reading of the manuscript. The authors are grateful to the financial support provided by Winisky Trust and the Agriculture Research Trust of the University of Saskatchewan, College of Agriculture.

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