Complementary collection, taxonomic characterization and evaluation of Iranian wheat germplasm

In order to enrich the wheat collection of the National Plant Gene Bank of Iran complementary collection, taxonomic characterization and evaluation of Iranian wheat landraces were carried out. About 386wheat acce ssions were collected from various geographical regions including East Azarbayjan, West Azarbayjan, Zanjan, Gazvin, Esfahan, Booshehr, Khorasan, Khoozestan, Kerman, Kermanshah, Golestan, Mazandaran, Sistan-ve¬Baloochestan, Hormozgan, Kohgiluyeh-ve-Boirahmad, Semnan, Ardebil, Markazi, Hamedan and Lorestan during 1382-1384. Data passports including geographical longitude and latitude, elevation, location, soil type, vegetation cover and etc were recorded according to the IBPGRI descriptors. In the 4th year, about 349accessions of the collected wheat accessions were planted in the experimental field of SPII in Karaj and taxonomic characterizations were performed during the growth stages. In addition, several morphological, phonological and agronomical characters e.g. days to heading, days to flowering, days to maturity, days from heading to maturity, days from flowering to maturity, number of flowers/spikelet, length of spike , plant height, stem thickness, number of spikelets/spike, number of seeds/spike, weight of hundred seeds, weight of seeds on 5 spikes, spike density, awnletted of spike, glume colour, glume hairness and number of nodes were evaluated according to the IBPGRI descriptors. accessions did not germinate and therefore were not characterized. Among the remaining 344 accessions the following species were characterized; 3 accessions of Secale cereale, one accession of Aegilops triuncialis, one accession of T. dicocoides, 2661ccessions of T. aestivum, 10 accessions of T. compactum, 45 acession of T. durum, 12 accessions of T. aestivum or T. durum, 3 accesssions of T. dicoccum, one accession of T. compactum or T. durum, one accession of T. aestivum or T. durum or S. cereale and one accession of T. aestivum or Secale cereale High coefficient of variation for some characters such as weight of seeds on 5 spikes (33.86%) number of seeds/spike (32.02%), stem thickness (26.02%), number of flowers/spikelet (20.88%), length of spike (17.64%), weight of hundred seeds (15.84%), number of spikelets/spike (16.44%), number of nodes (15.12%) and plant height (13.76%) indicated that there is high genetic variability among the 279accessions of Iranian bread wheat (T. aestivum) landraces Furthermore, the results showed that accessions with higher weight of 100 seeds, higher number of spikelet/spike, higher number of flowers/spikelet, higher number of seeds/spike, lower vegetative period and longer productive period had higher weight of 5 spikes compared to the other accessions.