Sequencing Wheat Genome

Sequencing of the Wheat Genome??I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report.

A collaboration of USDA scientists and other international scientists around the globe have sequenced bread wheat genomes. The wheat genome is five times the size of the human genome, giving it a complexity that makes it difficult to study.
This sequencing achievement is expected to increase wheat yields, help feed the world and speed up development of wheat varieties with enhanced nutritional value.

Olin Anderson of USDA's Agricultural Research Service says
Anderson: “I think it is a major step in wheat research. Wheat has been the last of major crops to have this kind of results that’s because of how complex the genome is. Which is too bad because wheat is the most widely grown crop in the world and probably the only of the major crops that really has room to expand production since it is so adaptive.”

Anderson explains the method they used to determine the sequencing of bread wheat genomes.
Anderson: “Much of the DNA of wheat like many plants, is not genes but rather long stretches of simple repetitive DNA. So what shotgun sequencing does is mainly look at the genes. So what this work has done is to identify most of the approximate 100,000 genes in bread wheat.”

This work to complete the shotgun sequencing of the wheat genome will help to improve programs on breeding and adaptation in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa for wheat crops that could be drought tolerant and resistant to weeds, pests and diseases.