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REVIEW article

Front. Plant Sci.

Sec. Plant Biotechnology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1661257

This article is part of the Research TopicTraits Evaluation and Gene Mining of Plant Germplasm ResourcesView all 3 articles

Perspectives of utilization of Aegilops species containing the U genome in wheat breeding (review)

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
  • 2FGBNU Vserossijskij naucno-issledovatel'skij institut sel'skohozajstvennoj biotehnologii, Moscow, Russia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The genus Aegilops L. is the closest wild relative of wheat (Triticum L.), which contributed two of the three genomes to cultivated wheat. The genus Aegilops comprises 23 species differing in ploidy level and genome composition; diploid species possess the C, D, M, N, S and U genome types, whereas various genome combinations are identified in tetraploid and hexaploid forms. The U-genome is present in diploid Ae. umbellulata and eight polyploid species (Ae. triuncialis, Ae. biuncialis, Ae. geniculata, Ae. peregrina, Ae. kotschyi, Ae. columnaris, Ae. neglecta (4x and 6x), and Ae. juvenalis). Some of these species have wide distribution range resulting in high adaptive capacity to various environmental conditions and can serve as a valuable source of genetic diversity and useful genes for wheat breeding. The U-genome is substantially rearranged relative to genomes of common wheat, which hampers the direct transfer of useful traits from Aegilops to wheat. Despite of it, many genes conferring resistance to leaf rust (Lr9, Lr76, Lr57, Lr54, Lr59, Lr58), stripe rust (Yr70, Yr40, Yr37, Yr42), stem rust (Sr53), nematodes (CreX, CreY, Cre7), as well as various abiotic stresses have been successfully introgressed from Aegilops into wheat genome. In this review, we describe the status of the contribution of Aegilops species carrying the U-genome to wheat improvement, the methods used by different scientific teams to transfer genetic material and future prospective of exploitation of their useful traits in practical breeding.

Keywords: wheat, Aegilops, U-genome, interspecific hybridization, Alien introgression, agriculturally valuable traits

Received: 07 Jul 2025; Accepted: 09 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Badaeva, González Franco, Razumovao, Tereshchenko and Divashuk. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Ekaterina D Badaeva, katerinabadaeva@gmail.com

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