Flowering earliness in wheat inbred breeding lines derived from T. aestivum ‘Chinese Spring’ x Dasypyrum villosum hybridization is not related to allelic variation at the vernalization loci VRN-A1, VRN-B1, and VRN-D1

Abstract

Substantial cryptic chromosome mutations or recombinations or gene mutations have occurred during the earlier generations following the hybridization T. aestivum “Chinese Spring” (CS) x Dasypyrum villosum event. Those genomic modifications were transmitted to the progeny plants, from which wheat introgression breeding lines (IBL) were derived. One of the mutations might have affected a flowering-promoting gene at a locus different from VRN-1, causing (under nonvernalizing condition and 13-14-hour daylength) the IBL “CSxV59” and the F1 hybrids “CSxV59 x cv Salgemma" and “CSxV59 x cv Isengrain” to start anthesis in less than 50 days from sowing compared to CS and to the two parental winter bread wheat cv Salgemma and cv Isengrain, which flowered about 150 days later.