Evolution of Triticum aethiopicum Jakubz. from the Position of Chromosome Analysis

Abstract

Cytogenetic analysis was conducted on a set of 67 Ethiopian wheat accessions collected by the expedition of N.I. Vavilov in 1927 and 85 years later by the Joint Ethiopian–Russian Biological Expedition (JERBE) in 2012 in the same sites of Ethiopia. The preservation of the polymorphism system of heterochromatic chromosome sites upon the change in the Ethiopian wheat population structure over the past period owing to a frequency shift of some specific chromosome variants and an increase in the proportion of genotypes carrying marker rearrangements was demonstrated. The unevenness of the geographical distribution of the 2A:4B translocation and of the 5A inversion was identified, and it was demonstrated that wheat accessions from Eritrea were cytogenetically the most isolated from the population from the central regions of Ethiopia. A low level of the Ethiopian wheat polymorphism was found along with the prevalence of the same chromosome rearrangement variants, which was indicative of monophyletic origin of the species. It was suggested that Triticum aethiopicum could have diverged from Ethiopian emmer as a result of hybridization with other wheat species, while subsequent evolution of these species occurred independently. Evidence for the participation of Ethiopian wheat in the formation of the gene pool of the unique Moroccan group of T. dicoccum was obtained.