Triticum aestivum Exome

Common wheat (bread wheat) is one of the most important staple foods of mankind. The adding of the D genome to the hexaploid wheat plays an indispensable role for its origination and the spread all over the world. It is now a consensus that the goat grass Aegilops tauschii is the D genome donor of modern bread wheat. Therefore, the D genome of wheat has a clear domestication history. Despite this, the understanding of the D genome evolution is very limited. A genome wide comprehensive analysis of the D genome in the wild and domesticated conditions is still lacking. Under the support of a cultivation grant of this key project, the applicant of this proposal has made a significant progress by sequencing 262 wheat accessions of Chinese mini-core collection which have been extensively characterized phenotypically on yield related traits. The exome capture sequencing generated a large number of common wheat D genome SNP data that can be utilized to study wheat D genome diversity as well as to compare with those from the D genome donor Ae. tauschii, such that the role of domestication on genome evolution and the polygenic interaction mechanisms for particular traits can be studied.