Abstract
Emmer wheat is a neglected crop that could be used in the breeding of modern durum wheat for quality, one important aspect of which is the starch composition that is related to the waxy proteins. A collection of 87 accessions of Spanish emmer wheat was analysed for waxy protein composition by SDS–PAGE. No polymorphism was found for the Wx-A1 gene. However, for the Wx-B1 gene, three alleles were detected, two of them new. The whole gene sequence of these alleles was amplified by PCR in three fragments, which were digested with several endonucleases to determine internal differences in the sequence. These variants were also compared with the Wx alleles present in durum wheat. Differences in size and restriction sites were detected. DNA sequence analysis confirmed that the alleles found in emmer wheat are different from those in durum wheat. The first data suggested that these alleles showed a different influence on the amylose content of these lines. The variation found could be used to enlarge the gene pool of durum and emmer wheat, and design new materials with different amylose content.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grant AGL2007-65685-C02-02 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) from the European Union. The first author thanks to the Spanish Ministry of Education (FPU programme) for a predoctoral fellowship. He also expresses his appreciation to Eva Madrid and Elena Pérez for their help in PCR analyses and to Ana Moral for field work.
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Guzmán, C., Caballero, L. & Alvarez, J.B. Molecular characterisation of the Wx-B1 allelic variants identified in cultivated emmer wheat and comparison with those of durum wheat. Mol Breeding 28, 403–411 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-010-9493-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-010-9493-2