18-BTT: Induction of double haploids in wheat using CENH3 mutants and genome editing

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Traditional wheat breeding requires six to seven generations of self-pollination to deliver highly homozygous and stable cultivars. An alternative approach is the production of doubled haploids (DH) which reduces the generation time to deliver true-breeding lines to a single generation. Current DH technologies in wheat (based on maize pollination) are laborious and require a high level of expertise and well-equipped laboratories. These are expensive resources and severely limit DH use even in developed countries. Amino acid changes in a gene called CENH3 result in haploid inducing (HI) lines in the model species Arabidopsis. We propose a strategy to combine mutants and gene-edited versions of this gene to alter CENH3 in wheat and develop haploid inducer lines. Our final goal is to accelerate wheat breeding by developing efficient haploid inducer lines that will produce doubled haploids (DH) as seeds