Exploitation de la variabilité génétique d’Aegilopstauschii dans l’amélioration du blé tendre.

Genetic improvement of crops is feasible only if breeders have at their disposal a sufficient pool of variability. In the case of bread wheat which is allohexaploid (2n=42, AABBDD), intraspecific variability has already been extensively exploited. Even if genetic progress is still possible, enlargement of variability available is crucial for breeders. Possibly, the best solution is to exploit wheat diploid progenitors and tetraploid wheats. Aegilops tauschii (2n=14, DD) is among the three progenitors the one with the highest potential. Indeed, its genome has full homology with the wheat D genome and it displays large genetic variation since it is adapted to a range of continental-type habitats.[br/]Synthetic wheats derived from hybridization between tetraploid wheats and accessions of [i]Ae. tauschii[/i] were produced by Club5 and INRA. The objective of the project was to carry out assessment of synthetic wheats and introduce [i]Ae. tauschii[/i] genetic diversity conferring novel traits in adapted wheats.Significant outcomes concerned i) large variability of grain storage proteins which are involved in baking quality and ii) selection in the progeny of hybrids between synthetic wheats and elite wheats of genotypes adapted to low input farming. These genotypes with a yield performance equal to or higher than check cultivars in low input farming displayed very high levels of resistance to diseases. Nevertheless they were late, tall, susceptible to lodging and had a relatively low Chopin alveographvalue (W).