Triticum turgidum Mapping Projects. Triticum turgidum

This species encompasses a number of wheat types as subspecies. The one most widely cultivated, durum wheat, is the cereal of a number of Mediterranean foods. Approximately 8% of the total area of wheat cultivation is devoted to this crop. The genome is tetraploid. The amount grown is small relative to industrial grains such as rice and Triticum aestivum. These two conditions produce a currently unsurmountable impediment to determining the nucleotide sequence of the genome. A genetic map is a necessary first step to use one of the subspecies as a source of agriculturally important traits by interspecific cross as well as introgress agriculturally important traits between cultivars of a subspecies.