The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC)

Bread wheat, the staple food for 35% of the world’s population and the most widely produced crop, is one of the most important crop species. Genomics offers powerful tools for understanding the molecular basis of phenotypic variation as well as accelerating gene cloning, marker assisted selection, and more efficient exploitation of genetic diversity.

The IWGSC, with more than 1,000 members in 57 countries, is an international, collaborative consortium, established in 2005 by a group of wheat growers, plant scientists, and public and private breeders. The goal of the IWGSC is to produce a high quality reference genome sequence for bread wheat.

To ensure the rapid delivery of new tools and resources to wheat breeders and scientists, the IWGSC uses a milestone-based, adaptable strategy, with short- and mid-term goals. The Consortium follows a chromosome-specific approach to develop physical maps, low coverage sequencing, and high quality sequencing of the Minimum Tiling Paths to achieve a gold standard reference sequence.

Survey sequences and the virtual gene order for all 21 chromosomes of the reference cultivar, Chinese Spring were published in July 2014. Physical maps have been completed or are underway for all 21 chromosomes. BAC-by-BAC sequencing is under way for several chromosomes and the pseudomolecule of chromosome 3B was completed in 2013. In this 10^th-anniversary year of the IWGSC, an overview of the consortium activities will be presented.