POLYMORPHISM OF HIGH-MOLECULAR-WEIGHT GLUTENINS IN WILD TETRAPLOID WHEAT - SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL VARIATION IN A NATIVE SITE

Variation in the electrophoretic pattern of the high-molecular-weight (HMW) glutenin subunits was studied in the Ammiad population of wild tetraploid wheat, Triticum turgidum var. dicoccoides (genome AABB), during a 5-year period (1983-4 to 1987-8). These storage proteins were analysed following one-dimensional sodium-dodecyl-sulphate polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis (SDS PAGE), using seeds collected annually from individual plants at 249 defined sampling sites distributed in 11 habitats. Since plants did mt grow at all the sampling points each year, 1108 accessions were analysed altogether. The population was found to be highly polymorphic: the HMW glutenin loci of genome A, Glu-Al-1 and Glu-Al-2, had four and two alleles. respectively, and those of genome B. Glu-Bl-1 and Glu-Bl-2, had five and seven alleles, respectively. The A-genome alleles appeared in 4 combinations, and the B-genome alleles appeared in 12 combinations. There were 18 intergenomic combinations (A and B genotypes), some of which were very rare while others were abundant and distributed along transects in clusters. The spatial distribution of these genotypes was nonrandom, with each of the 11 habitats characterized by different genotype frequencies. Yearly changes in genotypes, mostly occurring in the last 2 years of the study, had little effect on the total frequencies of die various genotypes. A high affinity was found between specific HMW glutenin genotypes and certain habitats. This affinity may have resulted from a random fixation of specific genotypes in different habitats (founder effect) or, alternatively, from natural selection, thus indicating either linkage between HMW glutenin alleles and adaptive genes (hitchhiking effect) or fitness of some of these allele combinations to specific micro-environments.