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Executive summary

2003 Workshop program

2003 Workshop summary

Historically, wheat genetics pioneers, including the late ER Sears, R Riley, H Kihara, and others who have retired (C Law, E Kerber, K Tsunewaki, S Maan, and R McIntosh), sought to create a vibrant wheat genetics community. They selected the hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum, 2n=6x=42, genomes AABBDD) variety Chinese Spring as a genetic model. An International Wheat Genetics Organizing Committee (IWGOC) with a rotating membership began the tradition of international wheat genetics symposia in 1958. This symposium is held every 5 years and usually in conjunction with the International Genetics Congress (although at different sites but within a span of 1-2 weeks between the two meetings). The International Triticeae Mapping Initiative (ITMI) was founded in 1991 to coordinate Triticeae genomics research. IGROW was organized in 2002 to complement the IWGOC and ITMI and provide a focus for rapidly developing wheat genomics research.

The vision of IGROW is to

• create a knowledge base on the genetics and biology of wheat plant,
• sustain wheat genetic infrastructure and resources, and
• serve as a platform for all wheat stakeholders.

The IGROW mandate is to coordinate and provide direction to diverse wheat research in the following ten areas:

• Bioresources: wild species, mutants, mapping populations, cytogenetic stocks, and DNA libraries.
• Structural and functional genomics.
• Proteomics.
• Transformation and genetic engineering.
• Chromosome engineering and alien transfers.
• Genetics of wheat-pest interactions.
• Wheat plant physiology.
• Breeding and crop improvement.
• Wheat utilization.
• Bioinformatics.

The wheat genetics community will identify the best scientists who will coordinate and lead research in the above-mentioned areas. Community resources and a collaborative thrusts will be developed.

Our immediate, urgent goal is to generate a draft sequence of the gene-rich regions of the wheat genome. Many people on behalf of IGROW have been very active in support of this mandate. Here, we provide a brief update of the activities of IGROW since mid-summer of 2002.

An important milestone last year was a series of meetings sponsored and/or organized by the interagency working group on plant genomes to decide on research priorties for the National Plant Genome Initiative (NPGI) for the next 5 years (2003-08). It should be noted that the first 5 years of NPGI-driven research, together with international initiatives and collaboration, has produced the complete genome sequences of Arabidopsis and rice, and EST resources for the major crop plants (http:/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/dbEST). The National Academy of Sciences organized a workshop on the NPGI in June 2002 (The National Plant Genomes Initiative objectives for 2003-08 NRC Report are available online at http://www.nap.edu). The USDA-CSREES organized a stakeholders workshop on ‘Plants and Pest Biology’ in November 2002. B.S. Gill represented IGROW, ASA-CSSA, and the National Wheat Improvement Council (NWIC). Rudi Appels, Dave Van Sanford (NWIC), Cal Qualset, and NAWG (National Association of Wheat Growers) provided statements supporting wheat genomics research (available at http://www.nap.aspb.org/publicaffairs/stakeholders/). BS Gill discussed the IGROW mission at the U.S. Wheat Scab Initiative and NWIC meetings in December 2002. The culmination was a NWIC delegation led by David Van Sanford who visited the NSF to make a case for sequencing the wheat genome. Rudi Appels organized an IGROW meeting of international collaborators in San Diego in January 2003. The final report of the Interagency Working Group on objectives for 2003-08 was released in January 2003 (available online at http://ostp.gov/NSTC/html/NSTC_Home.html). The targeted species are rice and maize, the report mentions allocation of funds for ‘highly accurate draft sequences of gene rich regions of several key plant species.’ Also mentioned is IGROW, among others, as a part of an established network of international collaborations to advance genomics of various plant species. More important, both the USDA and NSF agreed to sponsor a ‘Workshop on Wheat Genome Sequencing’ that was held on 9-11 November, 2003, in Washington DC. This workshop was preceded by an IGROW session in Italy during the 10th International Wheat Genetics Symposium 1-5 September, 2003. A report of the workshop has been prepared. All these activities culminated in a document to be published by February 2004 that will provide a blueprint of an international plan for the sequencing of the wheat genome. The report of the USDA/NSF/IGROW workshop also will be presented at the ITMI meeting during the PAG XI meetings in San Diego, CA, January 2004.

In the meantime, wheat genomics research is moving forward. The year 2003 was the last of a 4-year project funded by the NSF involving 10 universities on ‘Structure and function of the expressed portion of the wheat genomes’ (lead PI Cal Qualset, University of California, Davis) (http://wheat.pw.usda.gov/cgi-bin/westsql/map_locus.cgi). As a result of this project and ongoing work elsewhere, wheat now ranks number one in plants with over 400,000 ESTs (http:/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/dbEST) and also is the most densely mapped genome with over 20,000 EST loci mapped on the 21 chromosomes of wheat (see project website). Another NSF-funded project entitled ‘Insular organization of the D genome of wheat’ (lead PI Jan Dvorak, University of California, Davis) is constructing a global BAC-contig map of the D genome of wheat that is anchored to the EST physical map of D-genome chromosomes (project website: http://wheat.pw.usda.gov/PhysicalMapping). Jorge Dubcovsky is a lead PI (University of California, Davis) on a USDA-IFAFS project ‘Bringing Genomics to the Wheat Fields,’ which involves most of the public-breeding programs in the U.S. (project website: http://maswheat.ucdavis.edu/Production.htm). Congratulations to Jan Dvorak and Shahryar Kianian (North Dakota State University,Fargo) for winning awards for virtual wheat center proposals in 2003 from the highly competitive NSF Crop Genome Research Program. Dvorak proposal will establish a virtual center at UC Davis in wheat SNPs, a new generation of markers. Shahryar’s proposal will establish a virtual center in wheat mutagenesis and functional genomics at NDSU in Fargo. The abovementioned proposals are not only producing resources for the wheat genetics community, but have done much to bolster the position of wheat as a genetic.

This report also will be discussed at the national wheat workers meeting in February 2004 in Kansas City.

What else can we do? I think we have a window of opportunity to work as a more cohesive group as we move into wheat functional genomics research that will involve production and evaluation of a vast number of mutants in different ploidy wheats. These mutant resources will have to be screened for a variety of traits under diverse growth conditions and treatments. The genetic lesions underlying the targeted trait will have to be identified and relevant genes discovered rountinely in a community-wide effort. Herein then, we have an opportunity to involve diverse types of wheat expertise on a focused program, publish preliminary findings and insights in a vehicle such as the the Annual Wheat Newsletter or other internet-based outlets.