Gene introgression from common wheat into Aegilops L

Group of experiments were carried out to verify possibility of gene introgression from common wheat into Aegilops. The artificial indoor crossbreed was conducted using 7 genotypes from 4 wheat relative species as female, and common wheat as male. The experiment result shows that different species has variable cross ability. Among the 4 Aegilops species, the highest cross rate is from the combination of Aegilops tauschii × Triticum aestivum (46.49% for genotype Ae42, 22.58% for Y92), the second is from Aegilops ovata × T. aestivum (14.76% for Y100, 12.11% for Ae23), the third is from Aegilops cylindrica × T. aestivum (2.23% for Ae7, 8.50% for Y145), and the lowest is from Aegilops speltoides × T. aestivum (0.19%). Hybrid embryos from different combinations have different ability of callus initiation and germination. The hybrid embryos from A. ovata/T. aestivum and Ae. tauschii/T. aestivum have a higher level of callus initiation and germination. Ae. cylindrica/T. aestivum has a middle level, while the Ae. speltoides has a lower level. The interspecific hybrids between Aegilops and common wheat have so low fertility. In back-crosses, the seed-set rate of hybrids of Ae. ovata/T. aestivum is 3.71% and 4.36% respectively back-crossed with male and female parents, while for hybrids of Ae. cylindrica/T. aestivum, they were 0 and 0.33% respectively, and for Ae. tauschii/T. aestivum, 0.33% and 0 respectively. On selfing of the hybrids, the seed-set rate is 0 (no seed set from 9750 florets) for the combination of Ae. cylindrica/T. aestivum, 0.044% (3 selfed seeds out of 6870 florets) for Ae. ovata/T. aestivum and 0 (no seed set from 7253 florets) for Ae. tauschii/T. aestivum. The research suggests that the probability of gene introgression from T. aestivum into Aegilops species is very low in nature.