Wheat Genomics for Sustainable Agriculture

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Securing food supply on a global scale requires solutions to a complex set of unprecedented problems, including rising demand due to major population increases and social mobility, global climate change, rising energy costs and land, water and nutrient limitations. Finding and implementing these solutions is a top priority for governments and scientists worldwide, and has been articulated as a key BBSRC strategic objective. Opportunities for plant science to contribute to global food security include increasing the yield and quality of crops, combatting diseases, enabling maximal crop productivity in sub-optimal growth conditions, and increasing maximal yield potential. Utilising non- food components of food crops, such as cell wall material and waste products of food production to produce energy and industrial feedstocks, has a major role in reaching sustainability and maximising overall yield of renewable resources from limited land and soils. Grass crops are essential for human existence by directly or indirectly serving as the primary source of human nutrition. Wheat, rice and coarse grains such as maize are the most important crops for human food production, therefore increasing grain production sustainably is a critically important strategic and scientific objective. Wheat is the main arable crop in the UK, planted on 60% of arable land, with an annual farm gate value of ~£2.5b and a processed product value of approximately £150bn. Yield increases in wheat are slowing compared to past gains achieved primarily through improved agronomy and also in relation to other grain crops, notably maize. Genetic and transgenic improvement of wheat is therefore a very high priority in the UK and world- wide, and large international programmes for wheat genetic improvement are underway. A high quality genomics sequence provides a complete, accurate and durable record of genes, predicted proteins and other genomic elements that today are a fundamental foundation for nearly all areas of biological research. This proposal describes a UK component of an international coordinated wheat genome sequencing project that will make decisive and innovative contributions to sequencing the wheat genome and supporting crop improvement through genomics.