Abstract
Heat stress is a major productivity lowering factor in wheat. Wild progenitor species offer a wide spectrum of adaptation traits and can serve as valuable donors of stress tolerance. In the present study, genetic variation in 129 accessions of Aegilops tauschii Coss., the D genome donor of wheat, was evaluated for two heat tolerance related traits viz., cell membrane stability (CMS) and TTC (2,3,5-Triphenyl tetrazolium chloride) based cell viability. Cell membrane stability in the Ae. tauschii accessions at vegetative stage ranged from 15.24 to 80.39%. Nineteen Ae. tauschii accessions were superior to the tolerant bread wheat control (C 273). At anthesis stage a similar spectrum of variation was observed with twenty three accessions showing higher cell membrane stability than C 273. The average CMS level of entire germplasm set at anthesis (47.61%) was lower than at vegetative stage (58.89%). Clear genotypic differences were also observed for TTC based cell viability test. Ae. tauschii accessions displayed a range from 18.73 to 84.39% with eight genotypes excelling over tolerant bread wheat. Correlation of CMS values recorded at two stages was significant but of low predictive value (r2 = 0.137). Similarly significant but moderate correlation was obtained between CMS and TTC test (r2 = 0.325). Consequently all the three parameters were used to derive a cell thermotolerance index which was in turn used to identify ten tolerant Ae. tauschii genotypes. The identified accessions were re- evaluated for 1 more year and the three parameters viz., CMS at vegetative (r2 = 0.954) and anthesis stage (r2 = 0.932) and TTC cell viability at vegetative stage (r2 = 0.888) showed high correlation Strategy for use of identified accessions as donors is discussed.
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the financial support provided for this study by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (Project No. BT/PR7851/AGR/2/376/2006). The sharing of Aegilops tauschii germplasm by IPK, Gatersleben, Germany, University of Missouri and WGRC, Kansas State University, USA is gratefully acknowledged. We are also thankful to Dr. H.S. Dhaliwal and Dr. Kuldeep Singh, School of Agricultural Biotechnology, PAU, Ludhiana for procuring and sharing this germplasm.
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Gupta, S., Kaur, S., Sehgal, S. et al. Genotypic variation for cellular thermotolerance in Aegilops tauschii Coss., the D genome progenitor of wheat. Euphytica 175, 373–381 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-010-0185-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-010-0185-0