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Alloplasmic common wheat (Triticum aestivum L. cultivais 'Penjamo 62' and 'Siete Cerros 66') with cytoplasms of wheatgrass (Agropyron trichophorum and Ag. glaucum) showed two aberrant phenotypes, i.e., gross reduction in plant vigor and male sterility. Plant vigor and male fertility were restored by cytoplasm-specific telocentric chromosomes (telosomes). Studies on carbon assimilation and consumption and on oxygen evolution and uptake showed that maximum rates of apparent photosynthesis were significantly lower in the alloplasmic lines than in their corresponding euplasmic lines and that the telosomes restored a normal level of photosynthesis. The decreased apparent photosynthetic rates in the alloplasmic lines were shown to be not due to decreased rates of true photosynthesis but to increased rates of dark respiration in the green leaves. In contrast, dark respiration in the roots was significantly low in the alloplasmic lines. The alloplasmic lines also showed decreased rates of respiratory consumption of new photosynthates. These results suggest that growth depression and male sterility in the alloplasmic lines are related to aberrant mitochondrial function, which is compensated for by cytoplasm-specific telosomes.

We successfully demonstrated batch ethanol fermentation repeated ten times from raw starch with high ethanol productivity. We constructed a yeast diploid strain coexpressing the maltose transporter AGT1, alpha-amylase, and glucoamylase. The introduction of AGT1 allows maltose and maltotriose fermentation as well as the improvement of amylase activities. We also found that alpha-amylase activity during fermentation was retained by the addition of 10 mM calcium ion and that the highest alpha-amylase activity was 9.26 U/ml during repeated fermentation. The highest ethanol productivity was 2.22 g/l/h at the fourth batch, and after ten cycles, ethanol productivity of more than 1.43 g/l/h was retained, as was alpha-amylase activity at 6.43 U/ml.

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