Comparing Heat Stress Responses in Winter Wheat

Two winter wheat genotypes were selected for the experiments based on their significantly different spikelet fertility (seed-set) after a meiosis-staged heat-stress treatment, as confirmed in several studies (Végh et al., 2018 (link); Balla et al., 2019 (link); Janda et al., 2019 (link); Marček et al., 2019 (link)). The Hungarian ‘Mv 17-09’ genotype was considered sensitive to heat, and ‘Ellvis’, a German cultivar, was taken as heat tolerant. For each experiment, seeds (n=50 per genotype and treatment) were sown in Jiffy peat pellets. Seedlings were subjected to 7 weeks of vernalization at 4°C, then planted in plastic pots containing 2 kg of a soil-sand-peat mixture (3:1:1 parts, by volume). Plants were transferred to growth chambers (Conviron, Winnipeg, Canada) and grown using the T1 spring climatic program (Tischner et al., 1997 ).