INHERITANCE OF COLD HARDINESS IN TRITICUM-AESTIVUM X SYNTHETIC HEXAPLOID WHEAT CROSSES

Synthetic hexaploid wheat, produced by combining tetraploid wheat (AB genome) with Triticum tauschii (D genome), was crossed to modern hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum ABD genome) in an attempt to introduce new cold hardiness genes into the common hexaploid wheat gene pool. The cold hardiness levels of F1 hybrids ranged from similar to parental means to equal to the hardy parent, indicating that cold hardiness was controlled by both additive and dominant genes. As expected when dominant gene action is involved, differences between F2 and parental means were smaller than comparable differences in the F1. Frequency distributions of F2-derived F3 lines also suggested that dominant genes were involved in the control of cold hardiness in some crosses. Heritability estimates for cold hardiness ranged from 63 to 70 % indicating that selection for cold hardiness should be effective in populations arising from crosses between common and synthetic hexaploid wheat. However, high selection pressure on the progeny of crosses that included the most hardy T. aestivum, T. durum, and T. tauschii accessions as parents did not identify transgressive segregates for improved cold hardiness. These observations indicate that the close wheat relatives, sharing common genomes with T. aestivum, are not promising sources of new genes to increase the maximum cold hardiness potential of common hexaploid wheat.