Wheat Cultivar Identification by Gliadin Electrophoregrams. I. Apparatus, Method and Nomenclature

An apparatus and method are described for polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of gliadins. Since the gliadin pattern (electrophoregram) is a genotypic character, electrophoresis offers a promising means for identifying wheat cultivars. Electrophoregrams are presented for a number of wheat cultivars to illustrate the results that can be obtained by the method described. A new nomenclature for gliadin bands (components) separated by this method is also presented. The nomenclature uses a major band in the electrophoregram of the Canadian hard red spring wheat cultivar Marquis as the reference. It was assigned an arbitrary mobility of 0.50; all other bands of Marquis and other cultivars are identified on the basis of electrophoretic mobility relative to 0.50 for the reference band under identical electrophoresis conditions.