Shaping Wheat for the Future: Leveraging the Wheat genome sequence in Crop Efficiency Research and Breeding

Wheat is one of the three major staple crops worldwide, and the most widely grown crop on every continent except Antarctica. Despite increasing demands, wheat yield is stagnating and investments in wheat improvement are not keeping pace with other major crops, due to limited profitability of current business models.

Bayer believes this trend can be turned around with new technologies and wants to become a global leader in the Wheat Seeds & Traits Business. Since 2010 we are developing a strong R&D pipeline, encompassing both Breeding and Trait Research. The foundation of our wheat program is a broad germplasm base with local variety development in major wheat markets, a hybrid wheat platform and a portfolio of value adding traits, with a focus on agronomic performance.

The wheat genome sequence represents a key strategic resource for Bayer wheat research and breeding programs, ranging from the development and anchoring of molecular markers to support marker-assisted breeding, to the fine mapping, cloning and molecular characterization of genes underlying crop efficiency and hybrid performance.

At Bayer, we are convinced that a complete, high-quality reference genome sequence of bread wheat will be an invaluable resource to efficiently reach these objectives and the foundation for advancing  public and private wheat research programs. For these reasons, Bayer CropScience is a strong supporter of  the IWGSC since 2011, through both its contribution to the activities and strategy of the consortium, as well as the sponsoring of specific projects to accelerate the completion of key resources.