Identification of the entire chromosome complement of bread wheat by two-colour FISH

Using the Aegilops tauschii clone pAs1 together with the barley clone pHvG38 for two-colour fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) the entire chromosome complement of hexaploid wheat was identified. The combination of the two probes allowed easy discrimination of the three genomes of wheat. The banding pattern obtained with the pHvG38 probe containing the GAA-satellite sequence was identical to the N-banding pattern of wheat. A detailed idiogram was constructed, including 73 GAA bands and 48 pAs1 bands. Identification of the wheat chromosomes by FISH will be particularly useful in connection with the physical mapping of other DNA sequences to chromosomes, or for chromosome identification in general, as an alternative to C-banding.