Horsham team plays wheat role

Genetic research tapping into the Australian Grains Genebank in Horsham might help safeguard wheat in its role as a key global food crop against climate change.

Agriculture Victoria scientists, with support from a team at Horsham’s Grains Innovation Park, have traced the genetic origins of bread wheat back 8000 years.

The work has led to the establishment of a 10,000-year-old genome-level ‘family tree’ that will provide the foundation for faster development of wheat varieties suited to a changing climate.

The research relied heavily on the genebank’s large and diverse collection of wheat germplasm and had support from a two-year Horsham field trial.

The world-first research, published in the world’s highest-ranking genetics journal Nature Genetics, used genome-wide data to track historical gene flow from wild emmer, a wheat ancestor.

Agriculture Victoria scientist Dr Matthew Hayden said developing resilient wheat varieties would be vital in offsetting projected production declines due to increasingly hot and dry conditions predicted for eastern Australia.

“This research enables wheat breeders to accelerate precision breeding of wheat varieties that are better adapted to a changed climate, which is

critical to the future success of the grains industry,” he said.

“We can now pinpoint, with an extremely high level of confidence, areas of the wheat genome that affect climate-related traits.

“Researchers and breeders can use this information to develop new bread wheat varieties with more adaptive genes and improved heatstress tolerance, water-use efficiency and nutrient-use efficiency.”

This research has only become possible since Agriculture Victoria scientists, as part of a massive international effort, cracked the wheat genome sequence last year.

Agriculture Victoria scientists have now overlayed the wheat genome sequence with genetic data from almost 900 wheat varieties, representing worldwide wheat diversity.

This has led to a comprehensive 3.5 million-point genetic roadmap that shows the history of wheat domestication, adaptative evolution and crop improvement.

“Agriculture Victoria was in a strong position to lead this research due to its world-leading scientists and cutting-edge technologies,” Dr Hayden said.

The paper, ‘Exome sequencing reveals the role of historic wild relative introgression in shaping the adaptive landscape of the wheat genome’, is now published in Nature Genetics.