Cytogenetic analysis of a spontaneous 5B/6B translocation in tetraploid wheat landraces from Ethiopia, and implications for breeding

Three tetraploid (2n= 4x= 28) wheat Triticum turgidum L. landrace morphotypes (= genotypes) from Ethiopia were found to carry a variant karyotype directly discernible under the microscope. This was possible because the rearrangement involved one of the satellited chromosomes. Giemsa C-banding revealed that the rearrangement resulted from a 5BS.6BS(5BL.6BL) centric reciprocal translation. The banding pattern on 5BL was polymorphic, suggesting that this translocation might have occurred more than once. There was little C-band polymorphism for the remaining chromosomes, except for 2A. As pure lines, all three morphotypes showed normal chromosome pairing at metaphase I (MI) in pollen mother cells (PMCs). indicating that they are genomically stable. Meiotic analyses of F₁ hybrids and F₂ segregates derived from crosses with tester varieties clearly indicated that one of them (B-l–9) carried another translocation. However, we were not successful in delecting the chromosomes involved, presumably the interchanged segments did nol include C-banding regions. By using T5BS.6BS, direct evidence for segregation distortion against translocation homozygotes in intervarietal hybrids was obtained. The distorted segregation was attributed lo zygotic selection. No aneuploid plants were obtained from the F₂ segregates. However, translocation heterozygotes resulting in unstable meiosis were abundant in the F₂ generation. The implications of the results in using the indigenous landraces in hybridization breeding are discussed.