The molecular genetic characterization of the 'Bobwhite' bread wheat family using AFLPs and the effect of the T1BL.1RS translocation

Bobwhite is a generic name that refers to all sister lines derived from the cross CM 33203 with the pedigree Aurora//Kalyan/Bluebird/3/Woodpecker made by the CIMMYT bread wheat program in the early 1970s. Individual sister lines can be distinguished by their unique selection history. One of the parents, Aurora, contains the T1BL.1RS translocation from rye, and approximately 85% of the sister lines have inherited the translocation. The sister lines demonstrate great variability for agronomic traits such as maturity, height, grain color, reaction to leaf rust, stem rust, yellow rust, septoria leaf blotch and powdery mildew. Certain groups of sister lines derived from particular F(1) plants can be distinguished by their phenotype. One hundred and one Bobwhite sister lines were fingerprinted using four AFLP enzyme/primer combinations. Following multivariate analysis, two main and very distinct clusters were found, which reflected the presence or absence of the T1BL.1RS translocation. Within these clusters, lines clustered together, for the most part, with other sister lines sharing a common selection history. Removal of the AFLP markers that were correlated with the presence or absence of the translocation caused lines to cluster based on pedigree alone. Therefore, the presence of translocations in wheat could bias genetic diversity studies using unmapped markers such as AFLPs that are located on the translocated segment(s), with the result that the resulting clusters will not reflect the true degree of relatedness.