Identification of phylogenetic relationship among wheat and its ancestor based on sequencing of HKT gene

Salinity is one of the important problems in the world''s agricultural land that each year millions tons of salt from the soil through crop irrigation arrive to arable lands. Wheat is one of the first and most important cereal crops in the world that provide staple food for more than a third of the world''s population. Using modern genetic methods such as sequencing provided quickly and accurately assess of genetic material at DNA and RNA levels. Therefore، in order to identify the allelic diversity of HKT gene used cultivated and wild samples from wheat. Seeds were planted in plastic pots and at two-to three-leaf stage DNA were extracted according Doyle et al (1998) and PCR was performed using specific primers and PCR products were purification and sequenced. Results display variation at nucleotide and amino acid levels among samples with bread wheat in NCBI. The results of the DNA sequencing indicated that Aegilops speltoides with 98. 9% have highest similarity and Ae. caudata and Ae. triuncialis with 93. 9% show least similarity with Triticum aestivum in NCBI respectively، whereas Hordeum spontaneum has only 36. 5 similarities with HKT sequence in NCBI. Phylogenetic construction using UPGMA method at DNA level confirm above results. Also، phylogenetic tree show that Ae. speltoides and bread wheat are located in the same sub-group، this means that HKT gene via introgression from Ae. speltoides transfer to bread wheat.