Author(s): Juan B. Alvarez and Carlos Guzmán
Wheat (Triticum sp.) is one of the most important food crops worldwide. Di-, tetra- and hexaploid species are available, which along with the different subspecies of this genus have been used for food and feed. However, the genetic diversity of this crop has been seriously compromised, and only two main species; the durum and bread wheat, currently exist. The germplasm materials that were used in the past in Spain, have been regarded as ancient wheats, thus forming a group of neglected or underutilized crops that could be an interesting reservoir of variation for modern wheat breeding. In the last decade, our group has been evaluating and characterizing for the morphological and quality traits some of these Spanish ancient wheats. In these materials, using the SDS-PAGE technique and DNA sequencing, we detected an important variability for seed storage proteins, starch synthases and puroindolines, which are related with three important quality characteristics of wheat: gluten levels, starch levels and hardness, respectively. These novel variants could be used with the dual goal of genetic improvement and enriching the gene pool of these components in modern wheat.
