Transfer of useful variability of high grain iron and zinc from Aegilops kotschyi into wheat through seed irradiation approach.

PurposeTo transfer the 2S chromosomal fragment(s) ofAegilops kotschyi(2Sk) into the bread wheat genome which could lead to the biofortification of wheat with high grain iron and zinc content. Materials and methodsWheat-Ae. kotschyi2A/2Sksubstitution lines with high grain iron and zinc content were used to transfer the gene/loci for high grain Fe and Zn content into wheat using seed irradiation approach. ResultsBread wheat plants derived from 40 krad-irradiated seeds showed the presence of univalents and multivalents during meiotic metaphase-I. Genomic in situ hybridization analysis of seed irradiation hybrid F2seedlings showed several terminal and interstitial signals indicated the introgression ofAe. kotschyichromosome segments. This proves the efficacy of seed radiation hybrid approach in gene transfer experiments. All the radiation-treated hybrid plants with high grain Fe and Zn content were analyzed with wheat group 2 chromosome-specific polymorphic simple sequence repeat markers to identify the introgression of small alien chromosome fragment(s). ConclusionRadiation-induced hybrids showed more than 65% increase in grain iron and 54% increase in Zn contents with better harvest index than the elite wheat cultivar WL711 indicating effective and compensating translocations of 2Skfragments into wheat genome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]