**4. Conclusion**

Amaranth is mostly named as a crop of the future. Due to very good contents of protein, oil and many components with positive effects to humans, it is one of the promising crops. In the Czech Republic, there was interest of amaranth growing in the fields and the consumption of amaranth products is increasing as well. Most of grain raw material is imported to the Czech Republic from other countries, but there is increasing demand of Czech amaranth production. For amaranth cultivation it is necessary to know, what species could be grown. Because amaranth is not native in Europe, we have to receive seeds from other sides. In Czech legislation act about invasive weeds exists. Several amaranth species are included in this Act. In order to avoid cultivation of weedy amaranths, it is necessary to know the characteristics of the cultivated species and do not confuse them. Due to vegetable and weedy amaranth have black seed colour, it is impossible to use this trait as a marker. Amaranth glutelins were the best tool for the amaranth species identification, because they showed high polymorphism not only in position of bands but also in their intensity. The method used here was based on the data concerning the relative intensity and the position of the bands in the glutelin spectra obtained by the chip capillary electrophoresis what resulted in the exact similarity calculation of the protein fraction spectra and thus in the segregation of the cultivated grain species, the monoecious wild species and the dioecious wild species into three separate clusters. Each of the grain amaranth species was characterized by one dark band in the polymorphic region (54 – 65 kDa), while the hybrids possessed more bands of different relative intensity. The study brought several new contributions to the amaranth genetic research and is a very useful tool for species identification before cultivation in the field conditions. Unfortunately, this method is not so sensitive for individual amaranth genotype identification. We work on it in our current tasks.

Amaranth is mostly named as a crop of the future. Due to very good contents of protein, oil and many components with positive effects to humans, it is one of the promising crops. In the Czech Republic, there was interest of amaranth growing in the fields and the consumption of amaranth products is increasing as well. Most of grain raw material is imported to the Czech Republic from other countries, but there is increasing demand of Czech amaranth production. For amaranth cultivation it is necessary to know, what species could be grown. Because amaranth is not native in Europe, we have to receive seeds from other sides. In Czech legislation act about invasive weeds exists. Several amaranth species are included in this Act. In order to avoid cultivation of weedy amaranths, it is necessary to know the characteristics of the cultivated species and do not confuse them. Due to vegetable and weedy amaranth have black seed colour, it is impossible to use this trait as a marker. Amaranth glutelins were the best tool for the amaranth species identification, because they showed high polymorphism not only in position of bands but also in their intensity. The method used here was based on the data concerning the relative intensity and the position of the bands in the glutelin spectra obtained by the chip capillary electrophoresis what resulted in the exact similarity calculation of the protein fraction spectra and thus in the segregation of the cultivated grain species, the monoecious wild species and the dioecious wild species into three separate clusters. Each of the grain amaranth species was characterized by one dark band in the polymorphic region (54 – 65 kDa), while the hybrids possessed more bands of different relative intensity. The study brought several new contributions to the amaranth genetic research and is a very useful tool for species identification before cultivation in the field conditions. Unfortunately, this method is not so sensitive for individual amaranth genotype identification. We work on it in our

Fig. 3. *A. caudatus* (Standley, 1949) Fig. 4. *A. hypochondriacus* (NRC, 1984)

**4. Conclusion** 

current tasks.

#### **5. Acknowledgement**

This work was supported by the Czech Ministry of Agriculture QH92111.

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