abstract
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Cultivated wheat represents a major crop to farmers worldwide for its economic importance, since it is widely used as a basic component of many food products, mainly bread (bread wheat) and pasta or couscous (durum wheat). Double haploid (DH) production is a promising tool to further improve wheat genotypes through selection of desired traits implicated in salt tolerance, and also to undergo genetic engineering or genome sequencing. Tissue culture techniques were largely used to study in vitro wheat responses. The most used techniques are anther culture, isolated microspore culture (IMC), and more rarely gynogenesis. Wide crosses with maize or bulbous barley are also used to obtain haploid embryos saved after a failed fecundation of the wheat ovule. In Morocco, many works on wheat were done with a selection pressure on double haploids, trying to promote genotypes adapted to different abiotic stress. Results indicated the existence of considerable genetic variation among tested genotypes. Therefore, the different responses to salinity stress among wheat DH lines could indicate existing alleles conferring salinity tolerance. The available databases, obtained from genome sequencing projects, are providing valuable information for identifying and characterizing genes involved in salt stress response and useful for efficient marker development.
In this study we covered a large scope of results obtained with the different techniques for bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and durum wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. durum L.), and we discuss the perspectives in this field with a focus on salt stress tolerance.