Distribution of alleles of grain quality genes in Indian bread wheat varieties

The prevalence of puroindoline hardness mutations (alleles) among Indian wheat varieties, germplasm lines, Triticum spelta and synthetic derivative accessions was surveyed in the present study. A total of 356 wheat genotypes were examined.While most T. spelta accessions had soft grains, very few among the rest of the lines were soft and possessed wild- type alleles of the two puroindoline genes.The majority were,however, uniformly hard. The null mutation of Pina and the wild type Pinb allele (Pina-D1b/Pinb-D1a) was the most frequent combination in the Indian wheat germplasm. Out of the 356 lines examined, only 42 possessed the Pinb-D1b allele indicating gly46serine mutation in Pinb. One landrace MPG33 possessed the Pinb-D1e allele as found by sequencing the 447 bp product obtained with Pinb-D1 primer in this line. Distribution of the alleles of the serpin (Srp5B) gene was also studied in 90 Indian wheat cultivars released during 1985–2010. Only 11 of the 90 genotypes possessed the b-type allele indicating the prevalence of the desirable a-type allele in the Indian wheat varieties. The role of the alleles of puroindoline and serpins genes in end-use quality of wheat is discussed.