A COMMUNITY RESOURCE IN WHEAT TRANSFORMATION

Most analysts looking at global food security estimate that food production needs to double to feed 9.5 billion people by 2050. Wheat is by far the most important crop in the UK and north western Europe. In the UK average wheat yield is 8-10 tonnes per hectare; doubling the latter over the next 40 years requires that the current annual increases made by breeders, around 74 kg/ha, have to improve 2.5- to 3-fold. Meanwhile our climate is changing and we need wheat varieties which are better adapted to drought and reduced fertilizer inputs to maintain a sustainable supply of affordable, nutritious and safe food. Many technologies will contribute to tackling these targets and it is inevitable that genetic modification (GM) will make a contribution. This will either be directly, with the development and introduction of GM wheat varieties with new traits, or indirectly, as a research tool to better understand how trait genes function.

A genetically modified organism (GMO) has a new gene or set of genes added to its genetic material. In the case of plants, these can be introduced by a naturally occurring soil bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The bacterium inserts a small piece of DNA containing the new gene into the plant cell, and from the single transformed cell, a normal fertile plant can be regenerated. This process occurs in the natural environment in a limited range of plants, with specific bacterial genes being inserted into the plant cell that cause disease. Over the last 30 years, significant advancements have been made to this technology, removing the bacterial genes which are inserted into the plant cell, and extending the range of plant species to many crops. However wheat has remained quite difficult and inefficient to transform, until recent advances were made by researchers at a company in Japan.

NIAB has a Crop Transformation Team which mainly focuses on GM wheat, and is now using these new techniques with great success. We can add one (or a few) new genes into a wheat cell, which already contains an estimated 150,000 genes, and regenerate a new "fine-tuned" wheat plant. This is an important tool, which helps us understand what effect the gene has on the plant, and is much more precise than traditional breeding techniques. It allows both functional analysis of genes for research, and importantly a viable route to breeding new traits for commercial exploitation.

GM crops have to date have largely been confined to traits giving resistance to herbicides or insects, but a new generation of traits which confer drought tolerance, disease resistance, yield improvements or health benefits are now being examined which will have an important role to play in achieving food security and future increases in production. Some of these genes come from other crop species and would be impossible to study in wheat without GM. The Community Resource in Wheat Transformation will make it easier and more cost effective for UK academic researchers to access the best wheat transformation system in the world. It will particularly encourage plant scientists working in other species to evaluate their genes in wheat, and provide valuable materials for further research. The funding will also allow the technology to advance so that large or multiple gene combinations can be efficiently and economically transferred to a range of wheat varieties for evaluation.

Wheat is the most important crop in the UK, with an average yield of 8-10 t/ha; doubling this over the next 40 years requires that the current annual increases made by breeders, around 74 kg/ha, must improve 2.5 to 3-fold. Many technologies will contribute to this goal, including genetic modification.

The proposed resource will provide plant scientists with access to the best public wheat transformation system currently available anywhere in the world. NIAB operates a wheat transformation pipeline with efficiencies (inoculated embryos to regenerated plants) in excess of 30% with spring hexaploid wheat, and capacity of 3000 independent T0 wheat plants/yr.

The objectives are;
1. Provide resources for the transformation of 50 novel genes into wheat using our high throughput platform, producing 30 plants /construct. We intend that about half of the resource will be used by researchers working with genes in model species to test their utility in wheat; the remaining capacity will be open to wheat researchers with genes to test, e.g. genes underlying QTLs.

2. Extend the range of wheat genotypes responsive to this high efficiency method. We will focus initially on UK / European spring and winter varieties, extending the practical value of the technology in the UK environment.

3. Develop state-of-the-art transformation vectors capable of delivery of large insert/multi-gene clusters. This is crucial for multigene pathways or traits that need to be at a single locus so that homozygous lines can be easily generated or crosses made to other wheat varieties.

NIAB has licenses to provide wheat transformation services for both academic and commercial groups and permit development of commercial products in wheat in Europe. This gives academic researchers an advantage to immediately translate their research into a commercial opportunity without the need for further licensing or future royalty issues regarding the use of the basic transformation technology.

Most analysts looking at global food security estimate that food production needs to double to feed 9.5 billion people by 2050. Wheat is by far the most important crop in the UK and north western Europe. In the UK average wheat yield is 8-10 tonnes per hectare; doubling the latter over the next 40 years requires that the current annual increases made by breeders, around 74 kg/ha, have to improve 2.5- to 3-fold. Many technologies will contribute to tackling this target and it is inevitable that genetic modification will make a contribution.
This resource will provide a wheat transformation service delivering 30 confirmed transgenic plantlets/construct (or seed) to plant scientists in the UK. We will support external researchers in transferring GOIs (or identifying and cloning wheat orthologues) to the appropriate vectors and the initial analysis of the transgenic lines, so that they can quickly assess the impact of their GOI in wheat. We will encourage two groups of researchers to use this resource:
1. Researchers working with genes in model species who wish test their utility in wheat.
2. Wheat researchers who have candidate genes to test; the latter could be genes underlying for QTL.

For BBSRC this project is relevant to Priority 1 on Food Security as it provides a mechanism of addressing traits in wheat that are potentially difficult to achieve through traditional breeding approaches. By opening up the transformation platform to plant scientists from diverse backgrounds we would hope to get novel genes that address difficult targets. Prime examples here are in pest and disease resistance, water- and nutrient-use and uptake efficiencies, yield, and the reduction in crop losses through pre-harvest sprouting as all can have immediate impact on the sustainable supply of affordable, nutritious and safe food. In Priority 2, transformation, development of multi-gene, large construct vectors will have the potential to enable modification of metabolic pathways useful in the generation of energy and industrial biomaterials. The latter knowledge and technology improvements will be relevant and transferable to other crop species. Complex traits such as modified starch for industrial use, novel oil or biolubricant biosynthesis in oilseed crops, or improved bioenergy crops could be developed in tandem with water or nitrogen use efficiency targets using these tools in a multi-trait approach.

The proposed research will be of immense benefit to UK plant scientists and will provide novel candidate gene leads validated in wheat, which the wheat breeding community can develop in the future, either through GM or traditional breeding approaches. It will therefore greatly extent the value of novel crop research. Dissemination of the outcomes through workshops, publications and general publicity will ensure that the gene-based knowledge and technological advances reach the stakeholders, various sectors of agri-business and both governmental and non-governmental policy makers. It will demonstrate to the public and stakeholders that GM is not solely about herbicide resistance and that the technology is not limited to large multinational corporations.