Abstract:

Einkorn and emmer wheat are still cultivated in the mountainous areas of Turkey. They are resistant to biotic and abiotic stress conditions and are routinely used as food stuffs due to reasonable dietary fiber rate and vitamin and micronutrient content. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the feed potential of einkorn and emmer wheat populations. A total of 17 hulled wheat populations collected from different provinces of Turkey were studied during the years 2012 and 2013. Experiments were carried out in randomized complete block design with 3 replications to investigate grain yield, harvest index, chemical composition, and gas and methane production of the grain. Grain yield varied between 2.477 and 4.617 t ha–1, harvest index between 27.55% and 36.03%, crude protein (CP) between 6.69% and 16.22%, neutral detergent fiber (NDF) between 25.99% and 31.99%, acid detergent fiber (ADF) between 14.35% and 19.05%, crude oil (CO) between 1.33% and 2.05%, crude ash (CA) between 4.23% and 5.22%, metabolizable energy (ME) between 2.58 and 2.25 Mcal kg–1 DM, organic matter digestibility (OMD) between 65.59% and 72.73%, and gas production (GP) between 46.01 and 52.22 mL. While einkorn populations had higher ME, OMD, CP, and CO content values, emmer wheat populations had higher ADF and NDF rates. Moreover, there were significant variations in gas and methane production in all hulled wheat populations. Genotype-trait biplot analysis clearly indicated the variation limits of NDF, ADF, CP, OMD, ME, methane, GP, CO, and CA of hulled wheat populations. There were also significant linear relationships between CP and ME (0.585) and OMD (0.613); between CO and GP (0.513); and between GP and ME (0.623) and OMD (0.696). It was concluded that with regard to higher yield and digestibility, these hulled wheat populations could be used as basic germplasm for breeding of new einkorn and emmer wheat cultivars to be used as alternative feedstuff.

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