Isolation of a fertile wheat-barley addition line carrying the entire barley chromosome 1H

Abstract

The isolation of six of the seven possible additions of barley chromosomes to the wheat genome reported 18 years ago has made an important contribution to gene mapping in barley, first with genes controlling isozymes and more recently DNA (molecular) markers. A fertile addition line involving barley chromosome 1H,which carries genes controlling several characters of economic importance, could not be isolated at that time because it caused extreme meiotic abnormalities leading to complete sterility when added to wheat. Later the short arm of barley chromosome 1H was added to wheat as a fertile ditelosomic addition, but the non-availability of the entire barley chromosome 1H addition line has hampered the location of barley genes to the long arm of this chromosome. This problem has now been overcome cytogenetically as described herein. The resultant self-fertile disomic-monotelodisomic addition line carrying a pair of barley chromosome 6H and a heteromorphic 1H/1HS pair is more stable, and makes the wheat-barley addition line series complete for gene mapping work and will provide a vehicle for the possible transfer of useful genes from this barley chromosome to wheat.