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Abstract
The genus Aegilops includes about 20 identified species. At present, it is more and more accepted the idea that different Aegilops, as relatives of wheat, can serve as suitable materials in wheat genetic improvement. This is very important, especially in creating wheat lines or cultivars with high resistance to abiotic stresses and diseases. Researchers of the DPST, for several years continue the ex situ and laboratory evaluations on 24 Aegilops accessions collected in different areas of Albania, in order to evidentate some of their most interesting morpho physiological parameters. The ear weight, seed number, seed weight per ear and 1000 seeds weight for each Aegilops accession included in the experiment, have been evaluated. Beside these, the seeds imbibition potential and seedlings weight, height, leaf area have been evaluated, too. From the results of the numerous data processing, it is concluded that among the Aegilops accessions, included in the study, exist significant differences related their seeds and seedlings biometric parameters. For the most part of the evaluated parameters, the conical ear Aegilops accessions show advantages toward the cylindrical ones. Correlative analysis resulted in significant differences in the coefficients of correlation between seeds and seedlings parameters produced by Aegilops with distinct forms of the ear, respectively conical and cylindrical ones.
Keywords: Aegilops, conical/ cylindrical ear, correlations, imbibition.
Introduction
Recently, a great interest continues to be focused to the genus Aegilops, which is closely related to Triticum constitutes an important source for wheat improvement. The genus Aegilops contains 23 species comprising both diploids and polyploids, which originated from the center of origin [18].
Numerous studies have been elaborated for the assessment of the genetic resources of wheat and its wild relative species, in particular those of the genus Aegilops. Unfortunately, the original habitat of cultivated wheat and wild cereals are destroyed or modified by several activities related to different industries and other human activities [4,13]. These affected the disappearance of numerous local varieties and species. Efficient strategy to solve loss of plant diversity consists of exploiting wild germoplasm genomes of wheat species, which preserve a good part of their adaptive factor and diseases tolerance [13]. The value of wild wheat relatives as a genetic resource for wheat cultivars improvement depends on the amount of genetic variability....