GRAND FORKS, N.D. - Plant breeders and scientists around the world have a new tool for the research of wheat used for bread.
The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium has unveiled what it calls a whole genome assembly for bread wheat dataset. The information is available to both private- and public-
sector researchers worldwide.
“What this does is gives breeders and geneticists a foundational tool to understand wheat and what genes are doing important things, and using that to accelerate breeding,” says Jesse Poland, a Kansas State University wheat breeder and a leader of the the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium project.
The organization announced the genome assembly in January. The data subsequently was fine-tuned to the “highest quality possible” before its release, the IWGSC says.
Wheat is arguably the world’s most important crop, feeding one-third of the global population. Even more wheat will be needed to meet what the United Nations projects will be a 70 percent increase in world food consumption by 2050.
No easy task
Wheat’s genetic makeup is notoriously complex; it has roughly five times more genes than a human being. That’s slowed researchers working to develop new wheat varieties that yield better and offer more resistance to drought, insects and crop disease. The genome assembly dataset provides “a road map” to important genes that can be useful in those efforts, Poland says.
For instance, the dataset should help researchers in the fight against Fusarium head blight, or scab, a crop disease that can hammer both yields and quality in wheat, Poland says.
Scab has done at least $3 billion in damage to wheat and barley in 18 states since 1990, according to the U.S. Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative.
The genome assembly dataset is unrelated to genetic modification, Poland says.
The dataset now available accurately represents most, but not all, of wheat’s genetic information, the IWGSC says. The organization hopes to release what it calls “the gold standard reference sequence” - a complete genetic map of bread wheat - in 2017.
Poland says the newly unveiled dataset should provide immediate help to wheat researchers.
For more information, visit: wheatgenome.org.
