{"id":68704,"date":"2024-06-21T13:56:18","date_gmt":"2024-06-21T18:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68704"},"modified":"2024-06-21T13:56:18","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T18:56:18","slug":"gold-mine-of-century-old-wheat-varieties-could-help-breeders-restore-long-lost-traits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68704","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Gold mine\u2019 of century-old wheat varieties could help breeders restore long lost traits"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u2018Gold mine\u2019 of century-old wheat varieties could help breeders restore long lost traits<\/a><\/h3>\n

Historic traits could make modern wheat more resilient to disease and other stressors<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Wheat<\/div>\n<\/div>
Some of the historic wheat in a century-old collection was gathered from as far as Australia.<\/span>KGPA LTD\/ALAMY<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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\"issue<\/p>\n
Table of contents<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 384, Issue 6702.<\/span><\/i>Download PDF<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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An antique collection of wheat from around the world could breathe new vigor into the staple. When plant breeders created modern wheat during the 19th and 20th centuries, they focused on crossing and selectively breeding a few key varieties, creating a finicky racehorse of a crop: high yielding but vulnerable to disease, heat, and drought and reliant on a liberal application of fertilizer. Part of the solution, according to a study published today by\u00a0Nature<\/cite>,\u00a0may lie in the genetic diversity<\/a>\u00a0in 827 kinds of wheat, many of them long vanished from farms.<\/p>\n

The research is the culmination of a massive, decadelong effort to characterize those crop populations, or landraces\u2014sequencing their genomes, planting them in fields, and scrutinizing their traits. \u201cIt is a herculean work,\u201d says geneticist Jorge Dubcovsky of the University of California, Davis, who wasn\u2019t involved in the study. \u201cThis will be a fantastic new resource for the global wheat research community.\u201d Already scientists have identified genes that, if bred into modern wheat, could reduce the crop\u2019s need for nitrogen fertilizer and increase its resistance to wheat blast, a disease now threatening harvests in much of the world.<\/p>\n

The landrace collection was assembled in England starting in 1924, when Arthur Ernest Watkins joined the University of Cambridge\u2019s Plant Breeding Institute. Watkins was studying wheat anatomy, examining variation in traits such as the leaflike structures at the top of the stalk. He realized these traits might help with differentiating landraces…<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Gold mine\u2019 of century-old wheat varieties could help breeders restore long lost traits Historic traits could make modern wheat more resilient to disease and other stressors Some of the historic wheat in a century-old collection was gathered from as far as Australia.KGPA LTD\/ALAMY Table of contents A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[34728,705,875],"class_list":["post-68704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-byerik-stokstad","tag-science","tag-wheat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68705,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68704\/revisions\/68705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}