The generation of wheat/Aegilops umbellulata wild relative lines and characterisation of their traits associated with high protein content and disease

为不断增长的世界人口维持充足的粮食生产的挑战是巨大的。气候变化、病虫害、粮食质量和营养都是确保粮食安全需要应对和克服的挑战。小麦为全世界超过25亿人提供食物，提供每日卡路里摄入量的20%-50%(Ceoloni等人)。由于驯化过程中的遗传选择压力，小麦种植区蛋白质消费量的20%(Fu和Somers，2009)没有足够的自然遗传变异。有限的遗传变异将使未来难以提高生物和非生物的抗逆性，并难以改善面包生产所需的蛋白质水平等品质性状。小麦的生物强化也越来越重要，营养缺乏影响着大约20亿人(世界卫生组织，2006年)。小麦的野生近亲没有受到这种遗传瓶颈的影响，所以他们仍然传递着小麦所需的许多特征。这些野生亲缘关系是未开发的遗传变异的主要来源，通过将它们杂交(导入)到小麦中，从而引入来自野生亲缘关系的等位基因，这些遗传变异可以被转移到小麦中。通过UU基因组，这种野生近亲已知传递了多样性的特征，例如适合面包制作的高蛋白含量(Liu等人。2003)，并提高面包小麦的加工和营养品质(Kumar等人。2019年)。Bumellulata也被证明含有较高的铁和锌水平(Neelam等人。对于叶锈病和茎锈病的抗性，这可能导致全球小麦产量(60%-100%)的毁灭性下降((Park 2007)，(Bansal等人)。2020)。该项目将从Ae.将小麦与Ae.杂交，转化成小麦。然后回交几代，直到每个品系主要是小麦，但含有一小段来自Ae的遗传物质。猪笼草。其目标是生产一套小麦/Ae。每株含有一个覆盖Ae.7染色体的不同的纯合子片段。导入将使用细胞遗传学技术和KASP标记基因分型来确定转移材料的位置和大小(Grewal等人)。2020)。然后，遗传稳定的纯合品系就可以被培育出来，并对其进行理想特性的测试。特别是，堪萨斯州立大学的John Fellers教授将对这些品系进行抗锈性筛选(Fellers等人，2020)，并有机会访问堪萨斯州进行分析。根据项目的进展，诺丁汉大学还可能测试其他特性，例如农艺效益、光合作用特性、高籽粒蛋白质含量或矿物质(铁、锌)含量。这可能会为小麦育种者带来急需的遗传多样性，并有助于解决粮食安全的挑战。新的出版物可以包括导入系的产生及其使用GISH和KASP标记的特征，以及对系的性状分析。

The challenges of maintaining sufficient food production for a growing world population is immense. Climate change, pests and diseases, food quality and nutrition are all challenges that need to be met and overcome to ensure food security. Wheat, which feeds over 2.5 billion people world-wide (wheat.org) providing 20-50% of daily calorie intake (Ceoloni et al. 2017) and 20% of protein consumption in wheat growing areas, has insufficient natural genetic variation which stemmed from a genetic selection pressure during domestication (Fu and Somers 2009). The limited genetic variation will make it difficult in the future to increase biotic and abiotic stress tolerances and to improve quality traits such as protein levels for bread production. The biofortification of wheat is also of increasing importance, with 'hidden hunger' affecting approximately two billion people through nutrient deficiency (world health organisation 2006). Wheat wild relatives were not subjected to this genetic bottle neck, so they still convey many of the traits that wheat requires. These wild relatives are a major source of untapped genetic variation which can be transferred into wheat by crossing (introgressing) them together to introduce alleles from the wild relative.Aegilops umbellulata is one of these wild relatives. With the genome UU, this wild relative is known to convey diversity for traits such as high protein content suitable for bread making (Liu et al. 2003) and to increase processing and nutritional qualities of bread wheat (Kumar et al. 2019). Ae.umbellulata has also been shown to contain higher iron and zinc levels (Neelam et al. 2012) and, for leaf and stem rust resistances, which can cause a devastating decrease in wheat yields (60-100%) worldwide ((Park 2007), (Bansal et al. 2020). This project will transfer genetic variation from Ae. umbellulata into wheat by crossing wheat with Ae. umbellulata and then backcrossing for several generations until each line is mostly wheat but contains a small segment of genetic material from Ae. umbellulata. The aim is to produce a set of wheat/Ae. umbellulata lines, each plant containing a different small homozygous segment covering the 7 chromosomes of Ae. umbellulata, suitable to test for traits of interest.The introgressions will be validated using cytogenetic techniques and KASP marker genotyping to find the position and size of the transferred material (Grewal et al. 2020). The genetically stable homozygous lines can then be bulked and tested for desirable traits. In particular, the lines will be screened for rust resistances (Fellers et al 2020), by Professor John Fellers at Kansas State University with the opportunity to visit Kansas for analysis. Depending on the progression of the project, other traits may also be tested at Nottingham University, e.g., agronomy benefits, photosynthetic traits, high grain protein content or mineral (Fe, Zn) content. This could potentially produce much needed genetic diversity for wheat breeders and help solve the challenges of food security. Novel publications could include the generation of the introgression lines and their characterisation using GISH and KASP markers, and trait analysis of the lines.