Lucas Reber was awarded an IWGSC Early Career Award and will receive his award at the Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG) Australia in September 2024. Lucas also received a travel stipend to help defray the cost to travel to the PAG conference and will present his work during the IWGSC workshop on Thursday 19 September 2024.

The IWGSC Workshop at PAG is a premier venue for scientists advancing genome-based research and improvement in bread wheat. Oral presentations will focus on latest frontiers in genome biology, basic or applied, leading to significant advances in wheat science. The workshop will also include a presentation from the recipient of the IWGSC Early Career Award and travel stipend. 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.

A round-up of the IWGSC activities in 2023.

The IWGSC is looking for a Genome Curation Intern to join an international research project performing large-scale genome sequencing of common bread wheat. This will be a 10- week paid internship with a competitive salary. The start and end dates are flexible, preferably May-August 2024. Remote work is a possibility. Deadline for application: Friday 26 April 2024.

The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) is starting a two-year project, with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), to mine an untapped genetic resource for wheat improvement by sequencing the genomes of ancient varieties representing the worldwide diversity of bread wheat.

The IWGSC is pleased to announce the appointment of Susanne Dreisigacker and Rajeev Varshney as new Board members of the organization.

The first comprehensive book about the most complex plant genome – the Wheat Genome – is now out and available in open access.

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 as well as IWGSC RefSeq v2.1 and accompanying annotation. This year, the IWGSC has embarked on a new wheat diversity project to bring the reference sequence to platinum quality and to sequence landraces that reflect the breadth of wheat diversity. In the IWGSC workshop this year, presentations will include site-directed mutagenesis with genome editing, homoeolog expression bias inheritance in wheat, small RNAs, sequencing of mutations in wheat promoters, and the platinum quality sequence of Svevo with the tetraploid wheat pangenome. As usual, the workshop also includes the presentation of the Catherine Feuillet & IWGSC Early Career Award and travel stipend to Carolyn Mukiri Kambona who will speak about how memory of past drought stress affects plant responses. 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 wheat reference genome sequence (IWGSC RefSeq v1.0 & v2.1) has provided a foundation that has propelled recent advances in research and improvement of wheat. For the Structural and Functional Genomics Workshop, continued advances in research and understanding will require new experimental and computational approaches to structurally identify and assign function to genes (both coding and non-coding) as well as regulatory elements and epigenetic states. Accordingly, abstracts submitted for this workshop should focus on genome-scale studies that improve understanding of wheat genome function through the development of additional data resources, computational and experimental studies, exploration of gene families and pathways, and platforms that facilitate annotation and visualization.

Carolyn Mukiri was awarded the IWGSC and Catherine Feuillet Early Career Award and will receive her award at the Plant & Animal Genome Conference (PAG) in San Diego, California (USA) in January 2024. Carolyn also received a travel stipend to allowed her to travel to the PAG conference to present a talk during the IWGSC main workshop on Saturday 13 January 2024.