Progress Report from the IWGSC on Genomics Resource Development for Wheat Breeding

To reduce the complexity of sequence assembly and chromosome assignment for the allohexaploid, highly repetitive, 17 Gb bread wheat genome, the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) has developed an approach to generate physical maps, survey sequences and pseudomolecules representing individual chromosomes from  material flow-sorted from aneuploid lines of the reference variety, Chinese Spring 42. The consortium’s milestone-based strategy is providing plant scientists and breeders with an expanding array of tools and resources. These include physical maps, that are completed or under way for all chromosomes and a first draft survey sequence of the genome based on Illumina short read sequence data, annotated to assign gene models and public marker sets to individual chromosome arms.  The first high quality BAC-based sequence of a wheat chromosome (3B) was completed by INRA Genoscope in 2013 and will be followed shortly by chromosomes being sequenced in other countries. An update on the recent progress of the consortium will be presented.

Current wheat genome resources can be accessed from the IWGSC repository at http://wheat-urgi.versailles.inra.fr/Seq-Repository and the chromosome arm survey sequences and gene models are also available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/?term=PRJEB3955 and Ensembl Plants (http://plants.ensembl.org/Triticum_aestivum/.