Research
Genetic diversity in wheat
Using natural diversity to identify new markers or genes for key agricultural traits
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Project Summary.
Food security is internationally recognised as one of the major global challenges of the 21st century. By 2050, it is predicted that world food production will have to increase by 50% to meet demand. This is against the pressures of global climate change and resource limitations. Meeting this challenge is going to require the development of innovative strategies to make use of our unprecedented knowledge of modern bioscience in the post genomic era. Developing new varieties of wheat will be fundamental to meeting the 2050 goal.
We now have a number of projects funded that aim to explore the genetic diversity in wheat and through collaboration with physiologists and experts in high throughput phenotyping assocaite key traits with new markers, genes and alleles. Our current projects focus abiotic stress (heat and drought) and yield increase via enhancing photosynthesis.
Impact statement.
Ultimately, these projects aim to identify using germplasm and markers that can be used to improve, yield robustness of existing elite wheat cultivars.
Short term, during the projects we will develop and test new next generation genetic approaches to SNP discovery, we will generate high quality genotype data in an accessible form for globally important wheat lines.
Medium term, the projects will provide validated SNPs linked to enhanced photosynthetic performance and yield stability , it will also provide material for crossing to elite cultivars. It is also likely to identify genes and alleles underlying these traits.
Long term, identifying genes underlying traits will allow transgenic approaches to further enhance yield and yield stability . Also identification of specific mutations will allow precision genome engineering of elite wheat lines.
