Peer review

Cultivated Triticeae members, including wheat, barley, and rye, are at the center of attention of plant biologists due to their significant contribution to global food security. The completion of the first reference genome sequence of bread wheat (IWGSC, 2018) was a major leap forward for the wheat scientific community. It was difficult to foresee at that time that within the span of a few years, extensive genome sequencing resources of wheat and its wild relatives around the world would be available. We have outlined at least 26 studies that have characterized large wheat populations at a whole-genome level to answer questions related to wheat evolution, domestication, adaptability, wild introgressions, and breeding (Supplemental Figure 1 and the supplemental references therein). Such an advancement in wheat genomics over the past 6 years is unparalleled in any other crop species with a giant genome size such as wheat’s. The primary driver of this progress is the pivotal role of wheat in global food security, and funding from donor agencies has propelled efforts to genetically improve wheat for enhanced productivity, resilience to climate extremes, and alignment with consumer preferences, including nutritional and health aspects. An overview of these studies indicates that more than 110 000 wheat accessions from more than 30 species of cultivated wheat and wild relatives have been characterized to yield ∼450 Tb genome sequencing data and not less than 5 billion data points using modern genotyping technologies. All these studies are underpinned by the common prospect that “this study has strong breeding application or results are useful for future wheat breeding”. We provide here an applied breeding perspective of these studies and discuss the challenges to translating this extensive knowledge base for practical wheat breeding

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Jindong Liu : Not in IRS staff list but CIMMYT Affiliation

National Natural Science Foundation of China Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) National Key Research and Development Program Breeding for Tomorrow

https://hdl.handle.net/10568/179219