Gene resources of perennial wild cereals involved in breeding to improve wheat crop

The reduction of wheat genetic diversity is an urgent problem in modern wheat breeding, which is primarily due to the limited number of varieties had been used in wheat pedigree. As a result of the depletion of the genetic pool of wheat, its resistance to phytopathogens has dropped, that generally reduces the stability of the agrophytocenosis. One of the ways to expand the genetic diversity of wheat is the transfer of genes of economically valuable traits from closely related genera and species, classified into three genetic pools: primary (varieties of hard and bread wheat), secondary ( Triticum and Aegilops species), tertiary (most distant Triticeae species). The paper presents a review of success in gene transfer of economically valuable traits into the wheat genome from wheat's wild perennial relatives of the tertiary genetic pool: Thinopyrum , Dasypyrum , Pseudoroegneria , Elymus , and Agropyron . Representatives of these species have different levels of ploidy (di-, tetra, hexa- and even decaploids) and combine the genomes J (= E), St, W, Y, X, V, H, P, as well as their variants...