The following is an edited excerpt.
Two manuscripts related to the ancestral wheat genomes of Triticum urartu andAegilops tauschii provide an unprecedented glimpse into the adaptation and domestication of wheat throughout the ages and shedding light on the biology of the world’s primary staple crop.
The first study published in Nature today, led by teams at Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB), and Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), presents the genome of Bread wheat (T. aestivum, AABBDD), the progenitor of the Wheat A genome. Using a whole-genome shotgun strategy and Next-generation sequencing (NGS), researchers identified a large set of gene models (34,879) and abundant genetic markers with the potential to provide a valuable resource for accelerating deeper and more systematic genomic and breeding studies. For example, they found the T. urartu homolog of OsGASR7 might be a useful candidate for improving wheat yield.
Read the full article here: Wheat Genome Studies Shed Light On Its Domestication, Genetic Adaptation And Modification
