Morpho-physiologic variation of a Triticum monococcum L. core collection

The good nutritional properties of einkorn (Triticum monococcum L.) propose this ancient wheat as a perfect candidate for the manufacturing of new and special foods. The einkorn collection maintained at CRA-SCV (> 1600 accessions, domesticated and wild) represents a valuable pool of genetic variability, harbouring useful alleles for disease resistance, production and quality to be used in intraspecific and interspecific plant breeding programmes. To best utilise this broad genetic variability, a dedicated association mapping project was started in 2010. To this end, a core collection including 169 accessions representative of the variation observed in the whole collection and selected following geographic and qualitative criteria, was assembled. The core collection was then characterised both phenotipically (two locations, two years) and genetically (microsatellites and AFLP). Here presented are the morpho-physiological results of the first year of trial. The variation observed among einkorn accessions was relevant for all the main traits scored (heading time, plant height, ear length, n\ub0 of spikelets per spike and of seeds per spikelet, 1000 kernels weight, proteins and carotenoids content). When the geographic origin of the accessions was considered, the ANOVA showed the existence of significant differences between samples of different origin for most traits. In general, heading was later for einkorns from continental Europe than for those from Mediterranean countries. On the contrary, the kernel weight of southern Europe samples was higher than that of northern regions. Einkorns from different countries were significantly different for spike length, but no clear south-north gradient was observed; however, the number of spikelets per spike increased from south to north. Other traits with significant differences among samples from different origin were seed length, protein content and SDS sedimentation volume (a measure of flour bread-making quality)