Webinar: The Aegilops tauschii pangenome: A tool for harnessing wild wheat genetic diversity

Presenter

Andrea Gonzalez, PhD student, Wulff Lab, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Outline

The discovery of genetic diversity in the wild diploid wheat Aegilops tauschii can accelerate bread wheat improvement. As the progenitor of the D-genome of Triticum aestivum, genetic variation in Ae. tauschii associated with traits of interest can be transferred to wheat. Efficiently harnessing this variation requires large-scale and high-quality genomic resources for the species. To this end, we worked under the aegis of the Open Wild Wheat Consortium to compile a sequence-configured diversity panel of over 900 lines of Ae. tauschii and a pangenome resource comprising 43 lines to comprehensively characterize the genetic diversity of this wild relative of wheat.

Gene discovery, characterization and cloning in Ae. tauschii can be accelerated by our high-quality genome assemblies, including chromosome-scale assemblies for each of the three lineages comprising the population structure of Ae. tauschii. Our pangenome resource represents a near-complete set of genetic variants present in the species. Moreover, the extensive diversity panel, the largest available for a wild wheat, allows further exploration of this natural genetic variation, for example by increasing the resolution for genetic association studies to potentially detect rare variants for traits of interest.

In this webinar, I will present the pangenome and re-sequenced panel of Aegilops tauschii and provide examples of how this resource facilitates high-resolution genomics for gene discovery.

References

• Gaurav, K., Arora, S., Silva, P. et al. Population genomic analysis of Aegilops tauschii identifies targets for bread wheat improvement. Nat Biotechnol 40, 422–431 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-021-01058-4
• The Open Wild Wheat Consortium (2023)
• The Wulff Lab
• Center for Desert Agriculture, KAUST

Recording