Both stover and grain are important considerations in the adoption of the new pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) cultivars in crop–livestock farming system in north-west India. Local landrace germplasm contains many of the traits needed to breed new cultivars, which met such requirements. We evaluated 169 pearl millet landraces to assess their potential for breeding new open-pollinated varieties, and measured heterosis in landrace testcrosses to evaluate their potential for topcross hybrids breeding. There were significant differences among landraces in their total biomass, grain yield and stover yield. A high accumulation of biomass, followed by its efficient partitioning, was crucial in determining grain productivity under arid zone. There was also no trade-off between stover and grain productivity and several landraces outperformed check cultivars in both grain and stover yields. The manifestation of heterosis in the landrace-based topcross hybrids varied for different traits. Significant heterosis for biomass, grain yield and stover yield was observed in specific male-sterile seed parent × landrace-based pollinator combinations. Utilization of landraces in variety development and topcross hybrids breeding programmes targeting north-western India or similar regions are discussed.

Karnal bunt (KB) of wheat, caused by Tilletia indica (Mitra) Mundkur, adversely affects international wheat trading and the movement of germplasm between countries due to quarantine restrictions. Breeding for host plant resistance requires the identification of KB resistance sources. Accessions of the D genome progenitor of bread wheat, Aegilops tauschii, were screened in a specially designed screen-house, where the optimum environmental conditions conducive for KB development were simulated by controlling temperature, humidity, fogging and shading. The 183 accessions were subjected to artificial inoculation with a mixture of nine KB isolates, and seven proved highly resistant and four moderately resistant over three rounds of screening over 3 years.

Australia's native grass species contain a diverse array of wild cereal relatives which are adapted to a broader range of environmental conditions than current commercial cereals and may contain novel alleles which have utility in commercial production systems. Characterizing the available variation in endosperm morphology is one of the first steps towards in planta manipulation of endosperm by either the introgression of novel alleles or bioengineering cereal starch and protein. The endosperm of 19 crop wild relatives (CWR) was examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Mature caryopses were fixed, dehydrated, critical-point dried and then snap fractured transversely through the grain. Wild relatives exhibited similar types of starch granules to that of their respective cultivated species, though in general the wild species retained a greater proportion of the endosperm cell wall at maturity. The two species examined with no closely related cultivated species exhibited a rice-like endosperm. Wild sorghum relatives exhibited an abundance of endosperm variations described as variations in starch granule size, shape and surface morphology, and the distribution of protein bodies. This is particularly important because the grain of Sorghum bicolor has inherently low starch and protein digestibility. These variations within the wild relatives of commercial cereals may provide novel sources of genetic diversity for future grain improvement programmes.

The potential for the phylogeographical analysis of cereal landraces to determine the initial patterns of agricultural spread through Europe is discussed in relation to two of the first cereals to be domesticated, emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare). Extant landraces available from germplasm collections have a patchy distribution, largely being confined to regions of rugged upland topography, and the phylogeographical patterns observed may be due to ‘overstamping’ by more recent crop movements. Phylogeographical studies of non-viable historical landrace material held in herbarium and old seed collections and found in historical buildings have the potential to fill in the gaps in time and space. We explore the importance of precise geographical provenance and the limitations of this in extant and historical material. Additionally, we consider the effect of various chemicals and the preservation of DNA in the historical material.

The sequence-specific amplified polymorphism (S-SAP) method was used to genotype 198 Nordic bread wheat landraces and cultivars from the 19th to the 21st centuries. It was shown that the Sukkula-9900-LARD retrotransposon primer was highly suitable for resolving closely related wheat materials. Cluster analysis was generally consistent with pedigree information and revealed a clear separation for growth habit but not for countries. A principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) showed a separation into different time periods (before 1910, 1910–1969 and 1970–2003). These results are consistent with the breeding history and pedigree information, indicating that little hybridization has occurred between winter and spring wheat, in contrast to frequent exchange of germplasm between the Nordic countries. Estimates of gene diversity, the PCoA results, and changes in band frequencies across time indicate that plant breeding has led to substantial genetic shifts in Nordic wheat. Diversity was reduced through selections from landraces during the early 20th century, followed by a period of relatively lower genetic diversity, and a subsequent increase and net gains in diversity from the late 1960s onwards through the use of exotic germplasm. Thus, an anticipated loss of overall genetic diversity was found to be negligible, although allele losses have occurred at specific loci.

Aegilops species provide an invaluable source of genes for the improvement of cultivated wheats. This paper illustrates how the existing geo-referenced passport data associated with Aegilops species can be used to identify gaps in current conservation and also to develop a more systematic conservation strategy for the genus. Taxonomic, ecological, geographic and conservation information for the 22 Aegilops species were collated from ICARDA, EURISCO, GRIN and SINGER datasets, synthesized and analysed. The combined database contained 9866 unique geo-referenced observations collected between 1932 and 2004. Patterns of specific distribution based on the germplasm accession data and the predicted distribution using climatic models were compared in conservation gap analysis using GIS tools. The ex situ conservation status of each taxon was assessed and used to provide a priority ranking. Future ex situ collection is recommended in Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Israel, Libya, Spain, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The species identified with the highest ex situ conservation priority are as follows: Aegilops bicornis, Aegilops comosa, Aegilops juvenalis, Aegilops kotschyi, Aegilops peregrina, Aegilops sharonensis, Aegilops speltoides, Aegilops uniaristata and Aegilops vavilovii. Patterns of species richness based on the germplasm accession passport data are presented and five complementary regions of Aegilops diversity were identified in west Syria and north Lebanon, central Israel, north-west Turkey, Turkmenistan and south France. Within these areas, 16 IUCN-recognized protected areas are found and these are identified as potential sites to establish genetic reserves. However, the premier Aegilops hotspots on the Syrian/Lebanese border are not coincident with any existing internationally recognized protected areas, and here there is a need to establish a novel protected area.

Kernel texture (grain hardness) in common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is of primary technological importance and is largely determined by puroindoline gene sequence and expression. We investigated the puroindoline haplotypes of 246 Asian common wheat varieties. All but three were conclusively characterized for puroindoline a and b haplotypes. Of the total, 174 possessed the soft Pina-D1a/Pinb-D1a ‘wild-type’ gene sequences with SKCS hardness indexes (HI) ranging from 13.5 to 61.8. Among the remaining 72 varieties with HIs of 56.1–97.8, nearly half (30) were Pina-D1a/Pinb-D1b, 4 were Pina-D1a/Pinb-D1c, 19 were Pina-D1a/Pinb-D1p, 10 were Pina-D1b/Pinb-D1a (‘a-null’), 3 were Pina-D1l/Pinb-D1a, 2 possessed a new C-to-T SNP mutation at position 382, which is tentatively designated Pinb-D1ab, 1 was a ‘double null’ with neither puroindoline a nor b expressed and no PCR-detectable gene sequence, and 3 had undetermined/ambiguous puroindoline a sequence but possessed Pinb-D1a. The double null was the hardest of all varieties tested with an HI of 97.8. The frequency of soft and hard varieties and puroindoline hardness haplotype varied depending on the origin of the varieties. The lowest frequency of hard varieties occurred in Korea and south-western Japan. Tibet and Pakistan also had low frequencies of hard varieties. The highest frequency of hard varieties appeared in north-east China followed by north-west China and Nepal. Within Asia, the Pinb-D1p allele appears in a region extending from north-eastern China through Inner Mongolia, north-western China, Xinjiang and Tibet, with the greatest frequency in north-western China. This allele was also present in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but not found in Japan, and may have been dispersed along the ‘Silk Road’. All three Pina-D1l varieties came from China. The newly discovered SNP originated in Afghanistan and the ‘double null’ in Xinjiang.

Germplasm accessions of wild Lactuca species are maintained worldwide in ex situ collections as gene reservoirs for quality and disease resistance traits for cultivated lettuce. Accessions of 12 Lactuca species from 6 genebanks were compared via morphological characterization and AFLP (Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism)-based profiling to estimate the extent of duplication. A method of assessing redundancy within very similar, but not identical accessions, is proposed, based on 352 polymorphic AFLP products. Seven duplication groups showed a high level of AFLP similarity, and one pair of Lactuca saligna accessions displayed identical AFLP profiles. In several cases, the morphological assessment indicated that a taxonomic reclassification of accessions was necessary. Candidate duplicates were identified using population parameters and inter- and intra-accession variability. The implications of these findings on the conservation of wild species are discussed.

Hayachine-usuyukiso (Leontopodium hayachinense) is an alpine plant native to Mt Hayachine. This unique chrysanthemum is listed as an endangered plant by the Department of Conservation, Iwate Prefecture, and as a threatened plant by the Ministry of the Environment, Japan. We successfully cryopreserved the shoot tips from in vitro-grown L. hayachinense shoots using a vitrification protocol. Cold-hardened shoot tips were excised and pre-cultured on a solidified Murashige–Skoog medium containing 0.3 M sucrose for 1 d at 5°C. The shoot tips were then treated with loading solution for 20 min at 25°C, dehydrated in plant vitrification solution 2 for 120 min at 25°C and immersed in liquid nitrogen. The survival rate of the vitrified shoot tips was 63.3% after 30 d of regrowth. This protocol appears to be a promising technique for the cryopreservation of in vitro-grown shoots of this endangered plant.

Sets of microsatellites extracted from both a genomic library (gSSRs) and from expressed sequence tag sequence (eSSRs), and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were applied to assess the levels of genetic diversity in a sample of 70 barley accessions, originating from 28 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The eSSR assays detected a mean of 9.5 alleles per locus, and the gSSRs only 5.7 alleles per locus, but the polymorphism information content values for the two assay types were indistinguishable. Strong and statistically significant correlations were observed between the eSSR and gSSR (r = 0.86, P < 0.05), the eSSR and SNP (r = 0.74, P < 0.05) and the gSSR and SNP genotypes (r = 0.67, P < 0.05). Accessions originating from the Middle East and Asia had the highest levels of genetic diversity. Pairwise genetic similarity ranged from 0.16 to 0.87 (mean 0.43), indicating that the sample was genetically diverse. When clustered on the basis of genotype, Asian and African accessions tended to be grouped together, but those originating from the Middle East were not concentrated in any particular cluster.