Agronomic and Bread‐Making Performance of Fertile Alloplasmic Wheats 1

The wild and cultivated relatives of common wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) that produce fertile alloplasmic lines may provide a large reservoir of cytoplasmic variability for this crop. To determine the effects of alien cytoplasms on agronomic and bread‐making quality performance, 14 alloplasmic lines, each with the nuclear genome of the hard red spring wheat cultivar ‘Selkirk’ and cytoplasm from a species of Triticum L., Alegilops L., or Haynaldia Schur., and the euplasmic control were evaluated at three locations in 1979. In general, the performance of the alloplasmic lines corresponded to the genomic similarity between the cytoplasm and nuclear doner species. Accordingly, lines with cytoplasm from Triticum species were superior to lines with cytoplasm from Aegilops species for days to head, grain yield, and kernels per spike. However, lines with cytoplasm from Aegilops species had more protein and better loaf volume than the Triticum cytoplasm lines. Among the alloplasmic lines, only days to head differed among the lines with cytoplasm from Triticum . The alloplasmic line with Ae. variabilis Eig cytoplasm was inferior to the average of all other lines with cytoplasm from Aegilops for most of the agronomic traits studied. Differences between lines with cytoplasm from D genome Aegilops species ( Ae. squarrosa L., Ae. cylindrica Host and Ae. ventricosa Tausch), and those with cytoplasm from M genome Aegilops species ( Ae. uniaristata Vis. and Ae. juvenalis (Thell.) Eig) were found only for days to head and loaf volume. These results indicate a closer relationship among the D and the M‐genome Aegilops species than between these species and Ae. variabilis . Since agronomic performance was reduced only by the cytoplasms of Ae. variabilis and H. villosa , the other male‐fertile cytoplasms should serve as useful sources to increase the cytoplasmic variability of common wheat.