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Spelt wheat, Triticum speltaL., has been proved to be rich-sources of useful genes for tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress, and grain quality. But this crop plant has some undesirable traits including glume tenacity and brittle rachis. Free-threshing and reduced fragility of rachis are very important traits for cultivation. The objectives in the present study were to investigate genetic variation of rachis fragility in a wide range of spelt accessions, to examine its genetic segregation pattern, and to clarify if rachis fragility is associated with dosage of chromosome 5A in aneuploid lines of bread wheat. The results demonstrated that spelt germplasm contains a wide range of rachis toughness, and thus selection of spelt wheat with desirable characteristics combined with an appropriate level of tough rachis would be possible. Spike morphology in the F2plants was segregated into the three types, square-headed, speltoid, and compactoid. The F2plants with compactoid spikes had the most brittle rachis, followed by the speltoid and square-headed spike F2plants. Rachis fragility in bread wheat also had genetic variation and was associated with dosage of chromosome 5A.