Improved Methods for Reassembly and Analysis of the 17 Gb Bread Wheat Genome

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is one of the most important food crops in the world, and securing an increase in wheat production is essential to feed the growing human population. Building a reliable reference genome will assist in the acceleration of genomics assisted breeding programs, however producing a good genome reference is a challenge in wheat due to polyploidy, size and repeat content of the genome. Here, we have reassembled the wheat genome sequence based on a combination of chromosome arm specific reads, skim based genotyping by sequencing and local synteny. Comparisons with the current wheat reference assembly suggest that we have assembled a larger fraction of the wheat genome with lower redundancy and a greater gene content. Sixteen sequenced wheat cultivars were used to identify sequence diversity within breeding lines which can be applied to accelerate breeding of this important crop.