Wheat Genomics for Sustainable Agriculture

在全球范围内确保粮食供应需要解决一系列复杂的史无前例的问题，包括人口大幅增加和社会流动性导致的需求上升、全球气候变化、能源成本上升以及土地、水和营养限制。寻找和实施这些解决方案是世界各国政府和科学家的首要任务，并已被明确为BBSRC的关键战略目标。植物科学为全球粮食安全作出贡献的机会包括提高作物产量和质量、抗击疾病、在次优生长条件下实现最大作物生产力，以及提高最大产量潜力。利用粮食作物的非粮食成分，如细胞壁材料和粮食生产的废物来生产能源和工业原料，在实现可持续发展和从有限的土地和土壤中最大限度地提高可再生资源的总体产量方面发挥着重要作用。草本植物直接或间接地作为人类营养的主要来源，是人类生存所必需的。小麦、水稻和玉米等粗粮是人类最重要的粮食生产作物，因此可持续提高粮食产量是一项至关重要的战略和科学目标。小麦是英国的主要可耕种作物，种植在60%的耕地上，每年的农场门槛价值约为2.5亿GB，加工产品价值约为1500亿GB。与过去主要通过改进农艺以及与其他粮食作物，特别是玉米有关的收益相比，小麦的产量增长正在放缓。因此，小麦的遗传和转基因改良在英国和世界范围内是一个非常重要的优先事项，大型国际小麦遗传改良计划正在进行中。高质量的基因组序列提供了完整、准确和持久的基因、预测蛋白质和其他基因组元素的记录，这些都是当今几乎所有生物学研究领域的基本基础。该提案描述了国际协调小麦基因组测序项目的英国部分，该项目将对小麦基因组测序和通过基因组学支持作物改良做出决定性和创新性的贡献。

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.