Morphological and isozyme variation in genebank accessionsof Aegilops umbellulata Zhuk., a wild relative of wheat

Morphological variation and genetic variation at 15 enzyme lociwere studied in genebank accessions of Aegilopsumbellulata Zhuk., the diploid genome donor to all thepolyploid species of the section Aegilops ofAegilops. Accessions from the Greek Islands hadshorter spikes with smaller number of spikelets and smaller number ofawns on the empty glume. The number of alleles per locus (A= 2.01) and the proportion of polymorphic loci (P= 0.627) were similar to those of the other species ofAegilops so far reported. Genetic distancescalculated from isozyme variations among five regions revealed thataccessions from the Greek Islands are more distantly related to theother four continental regions, Iran and Iraq, Southeast Turkey,Central Turkey and South and West Turkey. The present resultsindicated the importance of collection covering the whole range ofgeographical distribution to capture the genetic variation present inAe. umbellulata.