Various milling parameters, wet gluten content and key dough properties were analyzed for two sister lines of bread wheat with Ae. markgrafii introgressions in genetic background of cultivar Alcedo carrying a set of sub-chromosomal alien segments on chromosomes 2АS, 2ВS, 3ВL, 4АL and 6DL. The lines revealed higher grain vitreousness, larger particle size of flour, and higher wet gluten content in grain compared to cv. Alcedo. The flour from these lines also showed excellent water absorption and developed more resilient dough. The introgressions in the Alcedo genome caused no reduction in 1,000-grain weight. General improvement of the grain technological properties appears to be the result of introgressions into 2АS, 2ВS and 3ВL chromosomes. Coincidence of locations of Ae. markgrafii introgressions in chromosome with the QTLs positions for technological traits, revealed in bread wheat mapping populations, is discussed.Keywords: bread wheat, introgressions, Aegilops markgrafii, vitreousness of grain, flour particle size, gluten content in grain, physical and mixing properties of dough
IntroductionWild crops' relatives represent a major source of genetic variations that have potential relevance for improving disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance. For this purpose, a number of such relatives were studied within bread wheat breeding researches (Friebe et al. 1996;Gill et al. 2011). The wheat polyploidy allows maintaining a range of entire alien chromosomes in its genome in the form of addition and substitution lines. Some of these lines have been further used for generating sets of introgression lines carrying different sub-chromosomal fragments. The manifestation of genes encoding resistance to fungal diseases can be found in some of these generated lines (Lapochkina et al. 2003;Simón et al. 2007;Leonova et al. 2008). At the same time, this genetic material is considered to be a source of traits related to drought tolerance (Reynolds et al. 2007;Placido et al. 2013). Mapping populations were used for genetic analysis of wheat quantitative traits, which revealed that quantitative trait loci (QTLs) relating to different grain and flour parameters were scattered throughout different chromosomes. The lines with small introgressions in comparable genomic positions may add to allelic variability for these quantitative traits. This kind of diversity is still poorly understood and is not involved in the breeding process.Today, only one locus Gpc-B1 extracted from the wild tetraploid species Triticum dicoccoides (Olmos et al. 2003) is used in wheat breeding for high protein content in grain. Its effect has been studied in different genetic backgrounds and in various environments (Kumar et al. 2011;Tabbita et al. 2013;Vishwakarma et al. 2014). Thus, the gene can be used in breeding without any negative impact on yield. Description of the effects of other exotic alleles on grain protein content and flour sedimentation volume can be found in literature (De Pace et al. 2001;Kunert et al. 2007). Derivatives of a cross b...