The study of isozyme variations has become a useful tool for investigating phylogenetic relationships among related species. Yoshitake (1969) reported the isozyme variation of acid phosphatase in the silkworm in relation to its speciation, while Chu (1967) and Shahi et al. (1969) compared isozymes of several enzymes among various species of the genus Oryza. Bhatia (1968) and Jaaska (1969Jaaska ( , 1970) studied esterase, acid phosphatase and alcohol dehydrogenase in some Triticum and Aegilops species. The gel isoelectrof ocusing method developed by Leaback and Rutter (1968) and others, gives a sharp zymogram, because carrier ampholites added to the gel form a pH gradient after electrophoresis and each isozyme is concentrated at a specific site, whose pH value corresponds to the isoelectric point of the respective isozyme. Consequently, this method effectively separates individual isozyme fractions by their specific isoelectric points along the pH gradient of the gel. Using this method, we previously investigated esterase isozymes in wheat and four Aegilops species (Nakai et al. 1969). Results encouraged us to extend the work to all species of Aegilops, whose genomic relationships have been thoroughly investigated (Kihara 1954(Kihara , 1957. Thus, the present experiment was carried out, in which a carrier ampholite with a pH range of 5-8 (a narrower range than that used in the previous work) was used, because most esterase isozymes in this genus have isoelectric points within this pH range.