CIMMYT-Wheat Seed: Characterization and Mobilizing Useful Variation from Gene Bank to Breeding Pipelines

Genetic resources in gene banks are the repository of gene(s) or gene combinations harboring useful genetic variation. CIMMYT’s ambitious project, Seeds of Discovery (SeeD; http://seedsofdiscovery.org) is a unique initiative working to harness global gene bank potential for current and future wheat improvement. During last three years efforts have been made in SeeD project to characterize these resources for bringing novel genetic variation for stress tolerance, yield potential and quality. Project vision is to genome profile the 150K CIMMYT and ICARDA wheat germplasm and till date 40% target (50K accessions) is achieved. Approximately 70K wheat accessions have been characterized for phenology. Core sets of wheat landraces have been developed for the first time in wheat research history using GBS as well as phenotype data simultaneously.  For pre-breeding panels of linked-top cross populations have been developed to facilitate genome-wide analysis. RILs derived from top cross are currently being advanced and materials can be brought to breeding pipeline in next couple of years. In nutshell, the approach has a balance between conventional and advanced breeding methods as well as between germplasm characterization and pre-breeding. These ongoing efforts can play a significant role in providing a platform for the next generation wheat improvement through introducing novel genetic variation and increased access of the global wheat germplasm pool for the global wheat research community.