Triticale × Wheat Hybrids

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L. em Thell) is the most important temperate cereal crop grown in the world. It is the end product of several thousand years of selection and 100 years or so of applied plant breeding. It is well documented that bread wheat is the result of natural hybridizations between diploid (2n = 2x = 14) and tetraploid (2n = 4x = 28) progenitor species, some of which are themselves important cereals, so that hexaploid wheat (2n = 6x = 42) can be regarded as a tetraploid wheat to which seven pairs of chromosomes from T. tauschii (Coss.) Schmal have been added. The man-made hybrid triticale (× Triticosecale Wittmack), on the other hand, has had a total history of only 100 years and has only been investigated seriously for the last 40 years. As the name implies, triticales are hybrids between hexaploid or tetraploid Triticum species and diploid species of Secale, cereal rye. To some extent, therefore, triticales can be regarded as wheat plants to which rye chromosomes have been added.