Quantitative botanical characterization of Saragolla wheat landraces from Abruzzo and Puglia Regions of Italy

Since the 1600s, a pasta wheat locally known as Sargolla, Saragollio or Saragollo has been cultivated in central and southern regions of Italy, including Abruzzo and Puglia. To identify if distinctive Saragolla landraces are present in Abruzzo and with a view to registering them as Conservation Varieties in the Abruzzo Regional Register of Genetic Resources, a quantitative botanical characterization of 11 farm-saved seed samples from Abruzzo and a previously defined Saragolla landrace from Puglia was performed. All twelve samples were grown for two years at the CREA-CI field station in Foggia, Puglia (Italy), and were morphologically characterized according to the criteria used by the botanist Johan Percival in 1921. In the 12 samples, we identified 9 taxonomically different botanical types, the most frequent of which were the italicum (32%), found in every population from Abruzzo. The leucurum and the affine were the main components of the previously defined Saragolla from Puglia. Results of the multivariate analysis indicated that the samples collected from farms in Abruzzo are more similar to each other than to the landrace of Saragolla from Puglia and support the registration of a specific Saragolla landrace for the Abruzzo region. The diachronic comparison of the botanical diversity of the currently cultivated Saragolla, with that observed in Sicily and Algeria at the beginning of 1900, suggests that a high degree of genetic diversity still exists in the 11 Saragolla populations from the Abruzzo Region.