Enhancing Diversity in UK wheat through a public sector prebreeding programme

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The work forms part of a major LOLA (Long and Large project supported under a special BBSRCscheme) project aiming to re-establish a publicly funded wheat pre-breeding programme in the UK. Wheat is the UK’s largest crop with an annual production of 14 million tonnes and market values for its seed and processed products of around 1.4 billion and 14 billion, respectively. Wheat yields are not increasing at comparable rates to those achieved in previous decades. Diversity has been eroded during its domestication and is being further eroded during selection. We need to halt this trend and enhance the diversity of wheat through exploiting exotic sources in breeding programmes. This programme will re-establish the exploitation of experimental crosses involving wild wheat, landraces, synthetic bread wheat and grasses (pre-breeding germplasm) in the UK, as a means of transferring traits of high agronomic potential. These lines will be a new source of diversity but will require further breeder selection to generate varieties with elite performance for release. The resulting germplasm has the potential to possess resistance to a range of pathogens and insects, tolerance to low nitrogen, drought, salt and heat as well as exhibiting enhanced yield characters. This integrated programme will address a broad range of BBSRC research priorities as stated above. It will also provide a pipeline for the translation of fundamental science into applied outcomes for exploitation by the UK breeding industry. Rothamsted will lead the phenotying activity, by screening germplasm produced for differences in nitrogen use efficiency, photosynthetic capacity and biomass production, phosphorus uptake and resistance to bulb fly, aphids and take all. This will be focused on phenotyping in the field but will also include glasshouse and controlled environment studies where appropriate. Rothamsted will also be responsible for integrating a smaller phenotyping programme.

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