Identification of durum wheat cultivars and monovarietal semolinas by analysis of DNA microsatellites

Microsatellites isolated in bread wheat were used to identify 20 Italian du rum wheat (Triticum turgidum var. durum L.) cultivars, A total of 15 micros atellite primer pairs were tested against DNA extracted from leaf tissue, s ingle seeds and semolina. Twelve markers showed allelic polymorphism among the 20 cultivars, providing a total of 41 different alleles, Firstly, an an alysis of microsatellite informativeness in the chosen set of durum wheat c ultivars was made and a set of highly polymorphic microsatellites was estab lished. Secondly, among the most polymorphic cultivars, the minimum number of microsatellites able to distinguish all cultivars was determined. A set of five microsatellites was found sufficient to differentiate the durum whe at cultivars examined. The method is directly applicable to seeds and semol ina, and is suitable for detecting seed mixtures in the same seed lot.