India helps crack wheat genetic code

Agricultural scientists from three Indian institutes have collaborated with the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) to decipher the genetic blueprint of wheat. This is expected to help breeders produce better quality cereal.

Scientists from the National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology, New Delhi; Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, and Delhi University South Campus, in collaboration with IWGSC, have published a chromosome-based draft sequence of the ‘bread wheat genome, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research said in a statement.

With this, wheat breeders will have high quality tools at their disposal to accelerate breeding programmes 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.

The draft sequence is already providing new insights into the history and evolution of the wheat genome and genes involved in grain development and disease resistance, the release said.

The Indian initiative was financially supported by the Department of Biotechnology at a total cost of ₹35 crore.

Earlier, Indian scientists had 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.

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