Abstract:

Wild wheat (Aegilops L. and Triticum L.) populations were collected from different regions of Turkey and characterized for 5 basic traits, in order to study their agro-morphological characteristics and variation among populations. Material of the study consisted of 112 populations of wild wheat and 12 populations of cultivated wheat. Cultivated einkorn (T. monococcum L. subsp. monococcum) and cultivated emmer (T. turgidum L. subsp. dicoccon (Shrank) Thell.) were used as checks for Triticum species. Among the Aegilops material studied, Ae. tauschii Coss. var. meyeri (Griseb. ex Ledeb.) has not been defined in the flora of Turkey before and is characterized agromorphologically for the first time in this study. Materials were transplanted to Haymana-Ankara Research Farm of the Central Research Institute for Field Crops after being germinated in a greenhouse in fall 2002. Populations were characterized for plant height, number of days to heading, growth habit, number of stems per plant and spike length. All observations and measurements were performed on the same randomly selected plants. Mean values and coefficient of variation were computed for all the populations. The highest variation was recorded for number of stems, while the lowest was for plant habit. Clusters based on a Euclidian similarity matrix ranked the species according to the sections they are located in. Considerable variation was observed, even between populations collected from nearby sites. It was concluded that existing ex-situ conservation programs should take into consideration that fact by sampling over short distances in order to capture as much of the variation as possible.

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