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The IWGSC has led the effort to develop a high quality, reference sequence of the large, complex (hexaploid), bread wheat genome: IWGSC RefSeq v1.0 and annotation v1.1. This year's workshop will include a presentation of the latest achievement, IWGSC RefSeq v2.0, which filled some of the gaps in v1.0 and was released recently by the IWGSC. The release to the scientific community of the reference sequence of Chinese spring in 2017 has led to significant advances in wheat genomics and some of these will be highlighted in the workshop. These include genomics assisted breeding for grain yield, stress resilience, and quality; releasing natural variation in bread wheat by modulating meiotic crossovers; 1000 wheat exomes that is empowering wild emmer introgression into bread wheat; and the search for an immortal hybrid through homeologous epistasis in wheat. As usual, the workshop also includes the IWGSC Early Career Award and travel stipend recipient with this year’s talk focused on the serine protease inhibitor family. This award is given to a young scientist nominated by anyone in the wheat community and selected by the IWGSC leadership in recognition of outstanding achievement.

The following scientists presented their research during the IWGSC workshop.

The workshop examined advances in functional annotation of regions in the reference genome sequence regions which will include gap closure and finishing the genome sequence as well as the functional annotation of the gene space. Generally the regions examined will be in agronomically important regions and we would expect new bioinformatics developments to accelerate the integration of multiple data sets. The IWGSC phase II strategy, post the release of the wheat reference genome (IWGSC RefSeq v1.0), includes developing a pipeline for community generated manual annotation coupled, functional annotation, and annual annotation releases by the IWGSC. The workshop focused on genome-level studies to facilitate manual and functional annotation, the process of manual annotation, and platforms for annotation and visualization.

The IWGSC held a Business meeting on Saturday 11 January from 6:20 to 8:30pm in Pacific Salon 4-5.

Poster presented by the IWGSC at the Plant and Animal Genome XXVIII Conference (11-15 January 2020 - San Diego, CA, USA)

The IWGSC organized two workshops and held a business meeting at the 2020 PAG Conference in San Diego.