J. Bio. & Env. Sci. 2015 168 | Ahmadi and Aboughadareh RESEARCH PAPER OPEN ACCESS Allelic variation of glutenin and gliadin genes in Iranian einkorn wheat Jafar Ahmadi * , Alireza Pour-Aboughadareh Department of Plant Breeding, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran Article published on November 30, 2015 Key words: Allelic variation, Einkorn, Glutenin, Gliadin. Abstract The glutenin and gliadin characteristics of wheat germplasm have a potential value and understanding the allelic distribution in glutenin and gliadin loci is very important for any wheat breeding program. In the present study, we reported the allelic status at Glu-A3 and Gli-A2 loci among a set of 40 accessions of T. boeoticum and T. urartu collected from different regions of Iran, based on diagnostic polymerase chain reaction assays. With respect to Gli-A2, 93% of the accessions carried a 210 bp allele. However, 5 and 13% of the accessions carried two new alleles with size of 490 and 700 bp, respectively. For Glu-A3 gene, 11 allelic variants were detected using the locus-specific primers set Glu-A3.1, which among them nine alleles identified as new alleles. Distribution of alleles in different origins and species showed high frequency in some of alleles in accessions of T. boeoticum than T. urartu species. In general, we characterized nine new alleles for Glu-A3 as well as two new alleles for Gli- A2 locus which it indicated that the higher genetic variations exist in the species of Iranian Einkorn wheat. Moreover, the results revealed a remarkable potential in accessions collected from west and central of Zagros Mountains especially, parts of Kurdistan and ‘Kermanshah’ as well as ‘Chaharmahal & Bakhtiari’ and ‘Kohgiluyeh & Buyer-Ahmad’ provinces, which carried different alleles. Therefore, these germplasm could be used as rich gene pool to broaden the genetic base of bread wheat. * Corresponding Author: Jafar Ahmadi  njahmadi910@yahoo.com Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences (JBES) ISSN: 2220-6663 (Print) 2222-3045 (Online) Vol. 7, No. 5, p. 168-179, 2015 http://www.innspub.net