The genus Pennisetum (Richard, 1805) includes two economically important tropical forage plants: Pennisetum purpureum (Schumacher, 1827) (elephant grass), with 2n = 4x = 28 chromosomes and genomes A'A'BB, and Pennisetum glaucum (Linnaeus, 1753) (pearl millet), with 2n = 2x = 14 chromosomes and genomes AA. The genetic proximity between them allows hybrids to be obtained (2n = 3x = 21) that yield...

South American Akodontini rodents are characterized by a large number of chromosome rearrangements. Among them, the genus Akodon has been extensively analyzed with classical and molecular cytogenetics, which allowed the identification of a large number of intra- and interspecific chromosomal variation due to Robertsonian rearrangements, pericentric inversions, and heterochromatin additions/dele...

Wheat powdery mildew, caused by Blumeria graminis f. sp. tritici, and wheat leaf rust, caused by Puccinia triticina Eriks, are two important diseases that severely threaten wheat production. Sorento, a hexaploid triticale cultivar from Poland, shows high resistance to the wheat powdery mildew isolate E09 and the leaf rust isolate PHT in Beijing, China. To introduce resistance genes into common ...

* Intergeneric hybrids between Lolium multiflorum and Festuca pratensis (Lm/Fp) and their derivatives exhibit a unique combination of genetic and cytogenetic characteristics: chromosomes undergo a high frequency of homoeologous recombination at meiosis; the chromosomes of the two species can easily be discriminated by genomic in situ hybridization (GISH); recombination occurs along the entire l...

A single chromosome of the grass species Festuca pratensis has been introgressed into Lolium perenne to produce a diploid monosomic substitution line 2n = 2x = 14. The chromatin of F. pratensis and L. perenne can be distinguished by genomic in situ hybridization (GISH), and it is therefore possible to visualize the substituted F. pratensis chromosome in the L. perenne background and to study ch...

Interspecific hybridization, polyploidization and transitions from sexuality to asexuality considerably affect organismal genomes. Especially the last mentioned process has been assumed to play a significant role in the initiation of chromosomal rearrangements, causing increased rates of karyotype evolution. We used cytogenetic analysis and molecular dating of cladogenetic events to compare the...

Apomixis is a means of asexual reproduction by which plants produce embryos without meiosis and fertilization; thus the embryo is of clonal, maternal origin. We previously reported molecular markers showing no recombination with the trait for aposporous embryo sac development in Pennisetum squamulatum and Cenchrus ciliaris, and the collective single-dose alleles defined an apospory-specific gen...

Agropyron cristatum (L.) Gaertn. (2n = 4x = 28, PPPP) not only is cultivated as pasture fodder but also could provide many desirable genes for wheat improvement. It is critical to obtain common wheat-A. cristatum alien disomic addition lines to locate the desired genes on the P genome chromosomes. Comparative analysis of the homoeologous relationships between the P genome chromosome and wheat g...

The 1BL.1RS wheat-rye translocation contained in the Russian cultivar Aurora has been the most widespread alien translocation in wheat-breeding programs all over the world. However, following the prevalence of new biotypes of the pathogens, disease-resistance genes in this translocation chromosome have been overcome and consequently they have been eliminated in modern wheat-breeding programs. I...

In previous studies, our research team successfully transferred the Ns genome from Psathyrostachys huashanica Keng into Triticum aestivum (common wheat cv. 7182) using embryo culture. In the present study, one of these lines, i.e., hybrid progeny 25-10-3, which matured about 10-14 days earlier than its wheat parent, was assessed using sequenced characterized amplified region (SCAR) analysis, ES...