A retrospection on triticale

This lecture presents a personal retrospection into the work done on triticale since 1947 in Spain. The review reports in a condensed and autobiographic way the successive steps developed by the author. They started at the Aula Dei Experimental Station in Zaragoza and continued uninterruptedly until now at the Polytechnical University of Madrid. At the beginning, it was suggested that triticale could be an interesting cereal for the Spanish drylands. Early, was shown that hexaploid is the optimal ploidy level for vigour and productivity. Different projects were designed to improve ear size, fertility, endosperm quality and seed smoothness. Numerous line of hexaploid triticale were obtained varying the plasmagenic environment by means of irradiation of ears during flowering. They were designed labourious experiments to obtain alloplasmic forms by backcross substitution. Occasionally, changes of cytoplasm induced significant modifications in chromosome stability, morphological characters, yield, endosperm proteins, male-sterility, etc. Different male sterile lines were essayed for the production of triticale hybrid seed.