Diversity of endosperm cells in Elymus and related diploid genera.

Elymus L. is not only an important gene pool for crops, such as wheat and barley, but also an important part of fine forages. The endosperm is a important part to seeds of cereal crops and the weight of endosperm is more than 90% in cereal crops seeds. The endosperm characteristics is a relatively stable genetic character, which can be used as a indicator to research plant classification and phylogenetic relationships. As the kind of micro morphological characteristics of plants, the endosperm characteristics is valuable in phylogeny of Triticeae. To provide evidence of the endosperm cells for reveal the phylogenetic relationships of Elymus species, as well as accumulate data for use the genus improve the quality of wheat and barley. The endosperm cells of 11 Triticeae species which belong to 6 Elymus species, 2 Pseudoroegneria species, 1 Hordeum species or 2 Agropyron species, were surveyed in this paper. The results were as follows: (1) Significant variations existed in the size, forms and quantity of endosperm cells in those species; (2) The cell shape and size existed small variations in Agropyron cristatum (P), A. mongolicum (P) and Pseudoroegneria libanotica (St) , P. spicata (St), respectively, (3) The differences in genera were smaller than those in species, indicating that the characters of endosperm cells had less value in the systematic studies of those genera than in the studies of those species in Triticeae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]