Triticale facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Triticale |
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| Triticale | |
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× Triticosecale
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| × Triticosecale Wittm. ex A. Camus.
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× Triticale Tscherm.-Seys. ex Müntzing |
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Triticale ( × Triticosecale) is a hybrid of wheat (Triticum) and rye (Secale) first bred in laboratories during the late 19th century in Scotland and Germany. Commercially available triticale is almost always a second-generation hybrid, i.e., a cross between two kinds of primary (first-cross) triticales. As a rule, triticale combines the yield potential and grain quality of wheat with the disease and environmental tolerance (including soil conditions) of rye. Only recently has it been developed into a commercially viable crop. Depending on the cultivar, triticale can more or less resemble either of its parents. It is grown mostly for forage or fodder, although some triticale-based foods can be purchased at health food stores and can be found in some breakfast cereals.
When crossing wheat and rye, wheat is used as the female parent and rye as the male parent (pollen donor). The resulting hybrid is sterile and must be treated with colchicine to induce polyploidy and thus the ability to reproduce itself.
The primary producers of triticale are Poland, Germany, Belarus, France and Russia. In 2014, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 17.1 million tons were harvested in 37 countries across the world.
The triticale hybrids are all amphidiploid, which means the plant is diploid for two genomes derived from different species. In other words, triticale is an allotetraploid. In earlier years, most work was done on octoploid triticale. Different ploidy levels have been created and evaluated over time. The tetraploids showed little promise, but hexaploid triticale was successful enough to find commercial application.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center triticale improvement program was intended to improve food production and nutrition in developing countries. Triticale was thought to have potential in the production of bread and other food products, such as cookies, pasta, pizza dough and breakfast cereals. The protein content is higher than that of wheat, although the glutenin fraction is less. The grain has also been stated to have higher levels of lysine than wheat. Acceptance would require the milling industry to adapt to triticale, as the milling techniques employed for wheat are unsuited to triticale. Past research indicated that triticale could be used as a feed grain and, particularly, later research found that its starch is readily digested. As a feed grain, triticale is already well established and of high economic importance. It has received attention as a potential energy crop, and research is currently being conducted on the use of the crop's biomass in bioethanol production.
History
In the 19th century, crossing cultivars or species became better understood, allowing the manual hybridization of more plants and animals. Semen could be taken from one animal to cross it with another that wouldn't mate with it directly, and things like crops fertilized by themselves (such as wheat) or by wind (rye) could more systematically be hybridized with each other.
In 1873, Alexander Wilson first managed to manually fertilize female wheat flowers (although wind fertilized, grasses are descended from flowering plants and technically still angiosperms) with male rye pollen, but found that the resulting plants were sterile, much the way the offspring of a horse and donkey is an infertile mule. 15 years later in 1888, a partially-fertile hybrid was produced by Wilhelm Rimpau [de] "Tritosecale Rimpaui Wittmack". Such hybrids only germinate when the chromosomes spontaneously double.
Unfortunately, "partially fertile" was all that was produced until 1937, when it was discovered that the chemical colchicine, which is used both for general plant germination and on humans with gout, would force chromosome doubling by keeping them from pulling apart during cell division.
Triticale then was viable, though at that point the cost of producing the seeds defeated much of the purpose of producing it.
By the 1960s, triticale was being produced that was far more nutritious than normal wheat. But it was a poorly-producing crop, sometimes yielding shriveled kernels, germinating poorly or prematurely, and didn't bake well.
Modern triticale has overcome most of these problems, after decades of additional breeding or gene transfer with wheat and rye. Millions of acres of the crop are grown around the world, slowly increasing toward becoming a significant source of food-calories.
Species
Triticale hybrids include:
- × Triticosecale semisecale (Mackey) K.Hammer & Filat. – tetraploid triticale (Triticum monococcum × Secale cereale, genome AARR)
- × Triticosecale neoblaringhemii A.Camus – hexaploid triticale (genome AABBRR)
- × Triticosecale rimpaui Wittm. – octaploid triticale (Secale cereale × Triticum aestivum, genome AABBDDRR)
Conclusion
Triticale holds much promise as a commercial crop, as it has the potential to address specific problems within the cereal industry. Research of a high standard is currently being conducted worldwide in places like Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
Conventional plant breeding has helped establish triticale as a valuable crop, especially where conditions are less favourable for wheat cultivation. Triticale being a synthesized grain notwithstanding, many initial limitations, such as an inability to reproduce due to infertility and seed shrivelling, low yield and poor nutritional value, have been largely eliminated.
Tissue culture techniques with respect to wheat and triticale have seen continuous improvements, but the isolation and culturing of individual microspores seems to hold the most promise. Many molecular markers can be applied to marker-assisted gene transfer, but the expression of R-genes in the new genetic background of triticale remains to be investigated. More than 750 wheat microsatellite primer pairs are available in public wheat breeding programmes, and could be exploited in the development of SSRs in triticale. Another type of molecular marker, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), is likely to have a significant impact on the future of triticale breeding.
Health concerns
Like both its hybrid parents – wheat and rye – triticale contains gluten and is therefore unsuitable for people with gluten-related disorders, such as celiac disease, non-celiac gluten sensitivity and wheat allergy sufferers, among others.
In fiction
An episode of the popular TV series Star Trek, "The Trouble with Tribbles", revolved around the protection of a grain developed from triticale, which writer David Gerrold called "quadro-triticale" at producer Gene Coon's suggestion, and to which he ascribed four distinct lobes per kernel. A later episode titled "More Tribbles, More Troubles", in the animated series, also written by Gerrold, dealt with "quinto-triticale", an improvement on the original, having apparently five lobes per kernel.
In "The Trouble With Tribbles", Mr. Spock attributes the ancestry of the nonfictional grain to 20th-century Canada. In 1953, the University of Manitoba began the first North American triticale breeding program. Early breeding efforts concentrated on developing a high-yield, drought-tolerant human food crop species suitable for marginal wheat-producing areas.
In the same episode, the character Chekov describes the fictional quadro-triticale as being a "Russian invention."
See also
In Spanish: Triticale para niños
