Over 40% of 450 registered wheat cultivars (Triticum aestivum) worldwide are composed of multiple biotypes

Many of 450 common wheat cultivars bred and registered during the twentieth century in 12 countries were proved, due to seed-by-seed analysis, to be composed of two or more biotypes differing in their alleles at the gliadin (Gli) loci. These multiple biotypes may be regarded as authentic progeny of the respective parent lines, as evidenced by the gliadin composition of the respective parents. Therefore, the official claim for each cultivar to be uniform is commonly not maintained in practice. The most frequent was a non-uniform cultivar composed of two biotypes differing at one Gli locus, but there were cultivars represented by a large set of related genotypes differing at several Gli loci. The proportion of the multi-biotype cultivars was never less than 15% for a country collection, exceeding 50% in other countries. This proportion differed significantly between neighbouring countries. In Australia, all multi-biotype cultivars were found in eastern states; in the state of Victoria, their frequency was statistically higher than in the rest of the country. The proportion of multi-biotype cultivars among newly-released cultivars decreased with time in Australia and the UK. Thus, the non-uniformity of registered cultivars represents a general and important phenomenon of common wheat as a crop.