Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Synthetic Wheat

                                   
  • Synthetic wheat is obtained as a result of a cross between a tetraploid specie, Triticum durum, and a diploid one, Aegilops tauschi, following by an artificial duplication of the genome by colchicine.
  • Synthetic wheat is made by intercrossing modern tetraploid durum wheat with derivatives of goat grass to recreate the natural hybridization made thousands of years ago that resulted in modern hexaploid bread wheat.
  • Synthetic wheats also appear to be resistant to a large number of major wheat pests and diseases.
  • Fortunately, some of the synthetic wheats are highly resistant to this new strain, but whether this is due to major or minor genes is not known.
  • These primary synthetic wheats are then further crossed to conventional hexaploid lines and form derived synthetic wheats.


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