Development of naked Triticum durum × Triticum dicoccum hybrids with anthocyanin color of the grain pericarp

The production of emmer hybrids with a high content of anthocyanins in the grains for the production of functional foods is a promising breeding direction. Phenotyping and preliminary assessment of the inheritance of gliadin-coding genes were performed for the most promising purple-grained emmer hybrids obtained previously after a complex three-stage crossing of purple-grained durum wheat (T. durum Desf.) with two different forms of spring emmers (T. dicoccum Schrank): the hybrid naked-grained variety Gremme and the red-grained awnless mutant line k25516. Genotyping hybrids for the storage protein genes in wheat grain, gliadins (Gli), enabled the selection of a purple-grained line that fully inherited gliadin-coding genes from emmer wheat k-25516, and a line inheriting these genes from durum wheat and emmer wheat k-25516. To improve the breeding material, backcrossing of three phenotypically and qualitatively different purple-grained hybrid lines with the parental variety Gremme, which demonstrated the highest yield, was conducted. During the Pp (Purple pericarp) genes selection of the plants in F_2–3 progenies, the use of microsatellite markers located close to Pp genes did not demonstrate reliable linkage to the target genes. The intragenic polymorphic PCR markers made it possible to accurately select plants carrying dominant alleles of two complementarily interacting genes, Pp-B1 and Pp3 in F_2–4. Based on the ease of grain threshing, the plants were selected in F₄. Thus, over two years, using small areas of the greenhouse and marker-controlled selection, a collection consisting of 25 naked and semi-naked spring purple-grained lines of wheat-emmer hybrids, constant in anthocyanin coloration and differing in gliadin-coding genes and other quality traits, was obtained.

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