Unlocking the genetic diversity of Creole wheats

Abstract

Climate change and slow yield gains pose a major threat to global wheat production. Underutilized genetic resources including landraces and wild relatives are key elements for developing high-yielding and climate-resilient wheat varieties. Landraces introduced into Mexico from Europe, also known as Creole wheats, are adapted to a wide range of climatic regimes and represent a unique genetic resource. Eight thousand four hundred and sixteen wheat landraces representing all dimensions of Mexico were characterized through genotyping-by-sequencing technology. Results revealed sub-groups adapted to specific environments of Mexico. Broadly, accessions from north and south of Mexico showed considerable genetic differentiation. However, a large percentage of landrace accessions were genetically very close, although belonged to different regions most likely due to the recent (nearly five centuries before) introduction of wheat in Mexico. Some of the groups adapted to extreme environments and accumulated high number of rare alleles. Core reference sets were assembled simultaneously using multiple variables, capturing 89% of the rare alleles present in the complete set. Genetic information about Mexican wheat landraces and core reference set can be effectively utilized in next generation wheat varietal improvement.

A genome‐wide association study of 23 agronomic traits in Chinese wheat landraces

“…Ltd (DArT P/L, Canberra, Australia) developed the GBS platform of DArT‐seq, which allows for the selection of genome fractions that predominantly correspond to active genes. DArT‐seq has been successfully applied in previous studies of wheat (Saint et al ., ; Vikram et al ., ).…”

Wheat Landrace Genome Diversity

“…The use is aided by the increased genotypic characterization of landrace collections such as those hosted at the Leibniz-Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research ( h uang et al 2002), INRA ( b alfourier et al 2007), and the John Innes Centre (JIC) ( w ingen et al 2014), and also of new collections, e.g. , of Mexican creole wheat ( v ikram et al 2016). To achieve the incorporation of useful diversity, there is a need to comprehend the ramifications of the identified genetic variation on meiosis, sexual reproduction, and fertility in, e.g.…”

Efficient curation of genebanks using next generation sequencing reveals substantial duplication of germplasm accessions

“…Leaves from single seedling plants were taken and DNA was extracted using modified CTAB method 24 and quantified using NanoDrop spectrophotometer V2.1.0 (ThermoFisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA). Genotyping was performed at DArT, Canberra, Australia using DArTseq 25 methodology that has been used in recent years at CIMMYT [25][26][27] . DArTseq is a combination of diversity array technology (DArT) 28,29 complexity reduction and nextgeneration sequencing (NGS) methods.…”