SHORT COMMUNICATION Characterization of interspecific hybrids of Triticum aestivum x Aegilops sp. without 5B chromosome for induced homoeologous pairing Imran Sheikh 1 & Prachi Sharma 1 & Shailender Kumar Verma 2 & Satish Kumar 2 & Sachin Malik 3 & Priyanka Mathpal 3 & Upendra Kumar 3 & Dharmendra Singh 1 & Sundip Kumar 3 & Vishal Chugh 1 & Harcharan Singh Dhaliwal 1 Received: 23 December 2014 /Accepted: 28 March 2015 # Society for Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology 2015 Abstract In the present study we aimed to characterize the interspecific hybrids made between Triticum aestivum cv. Pavon monosomic for chromosome 5B with different acces- sions of Aegilops kotschyi (UUSS) and Aegilops peregrina (UUSS) at cytological, molecular and morphological basis. Molecular analysis using Ph1 locus specific dominant marker and cytological analysis clearly differentiated between F 1 hy- brids (ABDUS) with and without 5B chromosome. Plants without chromosome 5B showed stunted and bushy growth habit with reduced height and more number of tillers per plant while those with 5B plants showed normal growth. Agree- ment of morphological observations with the cytological and molecular results indicates that the morphological characteris- tics could also be used to screen plants without 5B chromo- some. The results clearly demonstrated that the absence of chromosome 5B through the use of Pavon monosomic for chromosome 5B can be an efficient way to induce homoeologous pairing between chromosomes of wheat and Aegilops species for precise introgression of useful variability. Keywords Induced homoeologous pairing . Wild relatives . Monosomic 5B . Wheat . Ph1 Abbreviations PCR Polymerase chain reaction PMCs Pollen mother cells CTAB Cetyl trimethylammonium bromide Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important food crops of the world, which serves as a staple food of about two billion people (36 % of the world population). Among cereals, wheat alone provides 28 % of world’ s edible dry mat- ter and 60 % of daily calories intake in several developing countries (Distelfield et al. 2007). Wheat production will have to be doubled to 1200 mMT by the year 2025 in order to meet the increasing world demands and future needs of wheat. This increase must be brought about by improving productivity on land that is already under cultivation and not by bringing new land into use by destruction of forests, grasslands, etc. (Vasil 2003). The related wild species are still a valuable source of useful agronomic traits for the continued improvement of cul- tivated wheats. Wide hybridization of wheat with related wild species, coupled with cytogenetic manipulation of the hybrid material, has been instrumental in the genetic improvement of wheat. Chromosome engineering methodologies based on the manipulation of pairing control mechanisms and induced translocations have been employed to introgress into wheat specific disease and pest resistance genes. Several related wild progenitor and non-progenitor species have been used for de- velopment of alien addition, substitution and translocation lines and transfer of useful variability in wheat for disease resistance and quality improvement (Qi et al. 2007; Rawat et al. 2009; Schneider et al. 2008). Although a large number of wheat-alien addition/substitution lines carrying useful var- iability have been developed but only a very few have been exploited commercially. Most of the introgressed alien seg- ments from wild relatives into wheat either do not compensate Imran Sheikh and Prachi Sharma contributed equally to this work. * Vishal Chugh vishalchugh3@gmail.com 1 Akal College of Agriculture, Eternal University, Sirmour, Himachal Pradesh, India 2 Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India 3 Department of Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering, CBSH, GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India J. Plant Biochem. Biotechnol. DOI 10.1007/s13562-015-0307-9