Science on Sundays – July 2022

Dr Fiona Leigh, National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB)

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is one of the three most important food crops and ensuring efficient production underpins food security around the world.  Bread wheat has a complex evolutionary history with six copies of each chromosome, compared to the usual two. NIAB has generated a series of unique resources that allow us to diversify the bread wheat gene pool, by incorporating genetic diversity from wild and cultivated relatives such as goat grass, emmer and durum wheat.  These resources offer plant breeders the opportunity to recapture genetic diversity lost through domestication and crop breeding events, and to improve food security in future farming systems.