Progress with MAGIC Wheat in the UK

Work to create MAGIC wheat populations in the UK started in 2007, with the explicit objective that large mapping resources would be required to exploit genomic resources in wheat as they became available over the next decade. Eight years on, we are seeing the rewards of that long term view. A genetic map of 18625 SNPs with a total map length of 5444 cM has been created from an eight founder MAGIC population of elite UK winter wheat. This length is less than half that of the published consensus map using the same set of SNPs. The improved map is being used to study the genome organisation of UK wheat and in trait mapping using approaches based on haplotype sharing with the founder lines. Phenotyping is now being extended in collaborative projects with national and international partners.  In addition to the eight founder MAGIC population of elite wheat, a sixteen founder diverse population is under development as a community resource.  These activities and their preliminary results will be used to extol the many virtues of multi-founder mapping approaches. Seed, marker data, and some phenotype data have already been released publically and more is planned.