Genetic blueprint of bread wheat genome unveiled

Scientists from ICAR, Punjab Agriculture University and Delhi University as part of a global consortium IWGSC have unveiled a draft sequence of bread wheat genome -- a move that may help develop new and better varieties at a faster pace.
This is a major step towards decoding the full genome sequence, which will take another three years.
"Scientists from ICAR's National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology, New Delhi, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, and Delhi University South Campus in collaboration with International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) have published a chromosome based draft sequence of the bread wheat genome in top international journal Science," ICAR said.

The draft sequence is a major landmark towards obtaining a complete reference sequence of the hexaploid bread wheat genome, the ultimate goal of the IWGSC, it said in a statement.
ICAR's National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology national professor Nagendra Kumar Singh said: "This is an international project involving scientists from 15 countries. The draft has been published. So far, we have been able to decode 61 per cent of 21 chromosomes present in the genome of bread wheat".
Singh said it will take three more years to decode full genome sequence, which will help in the development of new and better varieties, which are tolerant to drought and various diseases, in a very less time.

Earlier, Indian scientists have helped crack the genetic code of rice and tomato as part of international consortia and also succeeded in decoding of pigeonpea (Arhar) and chickpea (Chana) genomes entirely on their own, the statement said.

The goal of the IWGSC is to make a high quality genome sequence of bread wheat publicly available, in order to lay a foundation for basic research that will enable wheat breeders to fast track development of improved varieties.
"With a chromosome-based full sequence in hand, wheat breeders will have high quality tools at their disposal to accelerate breeding programs and to identify how genes control complex traits such as yield, grain quality, disease and pest resistance and tolerance to drought, heat and salt stress.

"They will be able to produce superior wheat varieties at an accelerated pace to meet the demands of a growing world population in a changing environment," ICAR said.
Wheat is considered as one of the hardest crop plants to decode due to its huge genome size of 17,000 million base pairs, and presence of three sets of highly similar chromosomes in the genome.
India is entrusted with the responsibility of decoding wheat chromosome '2A', which alone has a genomic DNA code of about 900 million base pairs (or letters) that is about two and a half times the size of whole rice genome, and about one third of the size of the human genome.

The Ministry of Science and Technology gave a financial support of Rs 35 crore for the Indian initiative.