Species of the Triticum crassum complex, tetraploid and hexaploid T. crassum, hexaploid T. juvenale, and hexaploid T. syriacum, share a similar morphology. Variation in the restriction profiles of nuclear repeated nucleotide sequences is employed in identification ofgenomes ofthese species. The data show that hexaploid T. crassum originated from hybridization of the tetraploid cytotype of T. crassum with T. tauschii. Triticum juvenale and T. syriacum originated from hybridization of tetraploid T. crassum with T. umbellulatum and T. searsii, respectively. Tetraploid T. crassum appears to be an ancient allotetraploid that originated from hybridization of primitive T. tauschii with an ancient species in the evolutionary lineage leading to the section Sitopsis of the genus Triticum.The Triticum crassum complex includes the tetraploid (2n = 4x = 28) and hexaploid (2n = 6x = 42) cytotypes of T. crassum (Boiss.) Aitch. & Hemsl., T. juvenale Thell. (2n = 6x = 42), and T. syriacum Bowden (2n = 6x = 42). All species showed the same restriction patterns of chloroplast (cp) DNAs (Ogihara and Tsunewaki, 1988), which suggests that tetraploid T. crassum was the likely female parent of the hexaploid species. Each hexaploid species had, however, a different male parent. Triticum tauschii (Coss.) Schmalh. is the most likely male parent of hexaploid T. crassum (Kihara, 1949(Kihara, , 1957(Kihara, , 1963Kihara, Yamashita, and Tanaka, 1959;Shigenobu and Sakamoto, 1977; Jaaska, 198 1;Nakai, 1982; KimberandZhao, 1983;Zhao and Kimber, 1984;Zhang and Dvorak, 1992); T. umbellulatum (Zhuk.) Bowden is the most likely male parent of T. juvenale (Kihara, 1957(Kihara, , 1963Chennaveeraiah, 1960; McGinnis and Melnyk, 1962; Kimber and Yen, 1989); and T. searsii is the most likely male parent of T. syriacum .The origin of tetraploid T. crassum is uncertain. The chloroplast genome of T. crassum differs from the chloroplast genomes of all other Triticum species by at least six mutations (Ogihara and Tsunewaki, 1988). Cluster analysis of nucleotide sequences of the chloroplast gene encoding the large subunit of ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase (rbcL) in T. crassum, T. tauschii, T. caudatum, T. urartu, and T. aestivum indicates that the chloroplast genome of T. crassum is more similar to that of T. tauschii than to the chloroplast genomes of the other species (Terachi, Ogihara, and Tsunewaki, 1988; Tsunewaki, 1989). Triticum tauschii was also suggested to be a donor of one of the nuclear genomes of tetraploid T. crassum (Kihara, 1949;Chennaveeraiah, 1960; Jaaska, 1981), but chromosome pairing in interspecific hybrids revealed substantial differentiation of these genomes (Lilienfeld, 1951;Kimber and Zhao, 1983). The origin of the second genome of tetraploid T. crassum is even more obscure. Kihara (1949) (Kihara, 1954(Kihara, , 1963Kihara, Yamashita, and Tanaka, 1959). Although numerous studies have failed to verify the presence of the M genome in tetraploid T. crassum (Chennaveeraiah, 1960; Jaaska, 1981;Masci et al., 1992;Zhang and Dvorak, 19...