Agronomic evaluation of AABB wheat tetraploids extracted from wheat neo-allohexaploids

In order to understand if the mechanisms leading to stabilization of hexaploid wheats occurred in early generations after hybridization or accumulated slowly over the evolutionary course, we extracted tetraploids from newly synthesized allohexaploid wheats and characterized the effects of changes in polyploidy levels. Extracted wheat tetraploids (ETW) were developed from two neo-allohexaploids and their five phenotypic traits were compared to the parents. The ETWs displayed few small amplitude differences relative to the tetraploid parent of the synthetics. This suggest that genomic changes that might have occurred during the first three generations of the newly-synthesized wheat allopolyploids had very weak effects on the phenotypes.