Funded by BBSRC, HGCA, British Wheat Breeders and NIAB Trust, NIAB aims to access new genetic diversity from synthetic hexaploid wheat (SHW) that can then be transferred into a UK-adapted background for evaluation. Promising lines are then passed onto commercial breeding partners for incorporation into wheat programmes.
Synthetic hexaploid wheats recreate some of the rare hybridisation events that led to the development of bread wheat in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago. They are fully crossable with modern bread wheat, and represent an excellent bridge for transferring useful genetic diversity from wild relatives into cultivated wheat.
SHWs are developed by crossing durum wheat and wild goat grass Aegilops tauschii. NIAB is working with CIMMYT, the international wheat and maize improvement centre based in Mexico, which ran an extensive programme of SHW development in the 1980s. The CIMMYT SHWs have been used across the world, especially by breeders working in drought prone, lower yielding, extensive agriculture systems.
The plots at NIAB Innovation Farm demonstrate a selection of the most diverse SHWs, modern wheat’s original ‘parents’ Aegilops tauschii and durum wheat, and a cross section of the plant breeding material derived from the SHW parent SHW-144, which was crossed into the UK winter wheat varieties Paragon and Xi19.
The next phase is to transfer the best material to commercial wheat breeders to evaluate. NIAB is also developing its own SHWs to exploit variation that was untapped by CIMMYT SHWs. This forms part of the £7 million investment by BBSRC into public sector pre-breeding in wheat.
Plot 1: Parents
Plot 2: Early generations
Plot 3: Yield testing
