Bread wheat is often called “the staff of life”, hardly surprising as wheat is one of the three most important global cereal crops. However, unlike rice and maize, wheat breeders and farmers have failed to deliver significant increases in yield in recent years. This inability to increase the yield is a major concern to world agriculture and has contributed to high grain prices.

While rice and maize have benefited from developments in molecular biology such as the development and utilisation of molecular markers, the large size of the wheat genome (5x that of the human genome) and its polyploid nature (its cells have three genomes) has inhibited similar developments. Research by the University of Bristol is about to change this; the recent sequencing and public release, by Bristol, Liverpool and the John Innes Centre, of 95% of the wheat genome means that wheat breeders can now call upon almost any wheat gene, including those responsible for disease resistance and drought tolerance. This will radically change the nature of wheat breeding by shortening the breeding cycle and reducing costs.

Our team, led by Professor Keith Edwards, is already delivering results. BBSRC funding and close work with UK biotechnology company KBioscience has converted the previously identified wheat sequences into molecular markers of practical use to breeders. We have developed a set of molecular markers covering all 21 wheat chromosomes. The first of these markers was released in May 2011 with a second set due for release in early September 2011. 

To confirm that the markers are useful we have worked closely with UK wheat breeding companies to ensure they perform under industrial conditions and at a significantly lower cost than previous systems. UK wheat breeders now have a cheap and simple marker system based on Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), KBioscience have a wheat genotyping service ready to be marketed, and Bristol has been able to import KBioscience genotyping technology into other academic projects.

Our aim for the next two years is to have a mapped marker for every one of the 90,000 wheat genes. It should then be possible to map which genes underpin a variety of traits and which should be marked as targets for the next generation of wheat varieties.

More information about the Food Security and Land Research Alliance.

News story: Major breakthrough in deciphering bread wheat's genetic code published in Nature. 28 November 2012.