WHEAT GENETICS RESOURCE CENTER AT KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: SPECIAL GRANT
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 0218693
• Grant No.: 2009-34209-19912
• Proposal No.: 2009-03387
• Project Start Date: Aug 15, 2009
• Project End Date: Aug 14, 2010
• Grant Year: 2009
• Program Code: [DG]- Wheat Genetics Research, KS

Recipient Organization
KANSAS STATE UNIV
(N/A)
MANHATTAN,KS 66506

Performing Department
Plant Pathology

Non Technical Summary
The WGGRC has a mandate to conserve world's gene pool of wheat; evaluate useful genes and facilitate their transfer to wheat as improved germ plasm; conserve and develop cytogenetic stocks to facilitate genetic analysis and gene transfers; identify and catalogue wheat genes and facilitate their deployment for sustainable and profitable crop production; train undergraduate, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scientists; and promote and enhance awareness of genetic resources' conservation and utilization needs and potentials to agricutural and academic administrators and professionals, producers, and consumers. The WGGRC has established a national and international network of scientists to undertake a collaborative research effort on collection, conservation, and utilization of the world's germ plasm of wheat. The Center's scientists publish the Annual Wheat Newsletter summarizing wheat improvement research from all the leading institutions of the world. Currently, WGGRC efforts are focused on genetic transfers from the tertiary gene pool for developing new germ plasm for resistance to Fusarium head scab, wheat streak mosaic virus, barley yellow dwarf mosaic virus, leaf rust and stripe rust. Haynaldia villosa contains many useful agronomic traits and is resistant to a large number of wheat diseases including stem rust. We are introgressing the entire genome of H. villosa into wheat as whole- or part-arm genetically compensating translocations. We are constructing a physical map of chromosome 3A as a wheat genetics community resource to access many genes on that chromosome including a tillering and a red seed color genes. The germ plasm collection now stands at 10,484.

Animal Health Component

50%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

50%

Applied

50%

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
202	1540	1080	50%
202	1544	1080	40%
202	1549	1080	10%

Knowledge Area
202 - Plant Genetic Resources;

Subject Of Investigation
1549 - Wheat, general/other; 1540 - Hard red winter wheat; 1544 - Hard white wheat;

Field Of Science
1080 - Genetics;

Keywords

wheat, genetic resources, germ plasm enhancement, gene deployment,

host-plant resistance

Goals / Objectives
The WGGRC is a pioneering center without walls serving the wheat research community to ensure the free availability of germ plasm, genetic and genomic resources, and knowledge for sustainable and profitable wheat crop production (http://www.ksu.edu/wgrc). The WGGRC is advancing this mission by developing a broader germ plasm base and new genetic technologies for future advances in wheat breeding. Because of its national and international mandate, federal funding has been sought since 1988. Collaborative research programs have been developed with USDA-ARS Plant Science Research Unit locally and many scientists nationally and internationally to: 1. Collect, conserve, and distribute wheat genetic resources. 2. Develop improved germ plasm for the wheat breeding community. 3. Develop genetic stocks, mutants, and mapping populations for functional genomics/trait analysis. 4. Undertake global mapping and sequencing of the wheat genome to decipher the structure and function of all the genes in the wheat plant for enhancing crop yield and value. 5. Sponsor training and outreach activities for students and scientists from all over the world through internships, workshops, newsletters, and research publications.

Project Methods
1. Collect, Conserve, and Distribute Wheat Genetic and Genomic Resources: The working collection of wild wheat species maintained by WGGRC consists of 3,237 accessions. Samples in the working collection are maintained at 40 degrees F (4 degrees C) and 25 % RH. Seed is stored in moisture-proof, heat-sealable pouches. Long-term storage of seed is in a freezer maintained at -20 degrees C. We have established contacts with curators in Japan, Germany, Russia, Syria, and elsewhere to promote joint studies and sharing of germ plasm. We invite scientists for joint research with the aim to establish the world's most comprehensive working collection of wild wheats and promote basic and applied research on this collection and on conservation and utilization of the world's germ plasm of wheat. The species collection, hybrid derivatives, amphiploids, and addition and translocation lines are intensely evaluated for useful genetic variation by national and international research collaborators. We participate in large genomics projects and have accumulated a large number of genomic resources such as molecular markers, EST libraries, BAC libraries of Ae. tauschii and chromosomes 3A, 1D, 4D, and 6D of Chinese Spring, and many probes for FISH mapping. The WGGRC maintains an inventory of these molecular resources, and these are made available to the community. 2. Develop Improved Germ Plasm. A primary goal of the WGGRC is to develop new germ plasm from interspecific and intergeneric crosses and release it in a genetic background that will encourage its use by public and private wheat breeders. The germ plasm is available through formal release by the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station, cooperating experiment stations, and/or the USDA-ARS and submission of entries in the USDA-ARS Regional Germplasm Observation Nursery. 3. Develop Genetic Stocks. The WGGRC maintains a large number of genetic and cytogenetic stocks to facilitate genetic analysis and the transfer of alien variation into wheat. The novelty of transferred genes must be established by cytogenetic and molecular analysis. For transfers from nonhomologous gene pools, C-banding and genomic and fluorescent in situ hybridization and selection with molecular markers are the preferred methods. We are establishing standard karyotypes of the various genera and species of the tribe Triticeae that will allow the identification of individual chromosomes and permit the establishment of their homoeologous relationships. 4. Develop Genomic Resources. We are participating in an international project on the physical (BAC contig) mapping of the wheat genome for molecular cloning of useful genes for marker-assisted breeding. The WGGRC is engaged in making a physical map of wheat chromosome 3A, 1D, 4D, and 6D. 5. Training and Outreach. Training of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scientists is an important function of the WGGRC with both short and long term visits. Trainees gain a fundamental knowledge of wheat genetics and breeding through formal courses, seminars, and weekly laboratory meetings and conduct research in laboratory, greenhouse, and experimental field plots.

Progress 08/15/09 to 08/14/10

Outputs
OUTPUTS: ACTIVITIES: Experiments were conducted in germplasm enhancement, genetic and genome mapping in wheat by postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students and visiting scientists; unique genetic materials and genetic traits for disease resistance, were mapped. EVENTS: Project scientists attended and gave invited and volunteer presentations at professional meetings, special symposia and public institutions of higher learning; an annual field day was organized at Rocky Ford for the display of wild wheat species, genetic stocks and germplasm. SERVICES: Project PI serves on the International Fusarium Head Scab Symposium Organizing Committee, the Working Group on Global Biodiversity Trust on cereals; and is Co-chair of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC). Among project scientists, Dr. B. Friebe serves on the editorial board of the journals, "Theoretical and Applied Genetics", "Cytogenetics and Genome Research" and "Chromosome Research"; and John Raupp edits the Annual Wheat Newsletter. PRODUCTS: Hard red winter wheat germ plasm lines KS09WGGRC51-J, -C, and -P resistant to Hessian fly; KS10WGGRC52 resistant to stem rust; KS11WGGRC53-J and KS11WGGRC53-O resistant to leaf rust and stripe rust resistant (Lr57 + Yr40) and KS11WGGRC54-J and KS11WGGRC54-O resistant to leaf rust resistant (Lr58) were released; New acquisitions to the WGGRC Gene Bank included 100 lines of primitive einkorn wheat, and mapping populations for drought tolerance and Karnal bunt resistance; WGGRC website (www.ksu.edu/wgrc) was improved to provide information on wheat genetic stocks, wheat taxonomy, WGGRC publications, research protocols and ongoing research projects; BAC libraries were made for chromosomes 1D, 4D and 6D. DISSEMINATION: Samples of 75 WGRC germ plasm releases, 1195 genetic stocks, and 114 wild wheat lines were sent in response to 100 requests from scientists in the U.S. (18 states) and 17 foreign countries including Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, China, Romania, Netherlands, Syria, and the United Kingdom for wheat genetics and breeding research; Dozens of groups including high school students, farmers, delegations from foreign country visited WGRC facilities; the 2010 Annual Wheat Newsletter at 320 pages included contributions from private companies, many research laboratories in the US and overseas and is available by download, 85 copies at(http://wheat.pw.usda.gov/ggpages/awn/). PARTICIPANTS: BS Gill, Distinguished Professor and Director WGRC, provides overall management of the project; Bernd Friebe, Research Professor, manages cytogenetics and chromosome imaging laboratories, maintains over a thousand cytogenetic stocks and develops new stocks such as alien addition and translocation lines that are continuously needed for germ plasm development, and are also essential tools for wheat genome analysis and manipulation for crop improvement, supervises the work of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and visiting scientists in the laboratory; W. John Raupp, Senior Scientist, manages the Genetic Resources laboratory and is the curator of the Gene Bank responsible for maintaining, cataloguing, regenerating, and distributing of the wild wheat species collection of over 6,000 accessions; technical illustrations; purchasing; editing of manuscripts and grants; and maintains the WGGRC website. Edits the Annual Wheat Newsletter; Duane Wilson, Associate Scientist, responsible for greenhouse, growth chamber and field facilities; soil preparation, plantings, pollinations, sprays in the greenhouses; maintains pedigrees; training of new staff in safe laboratory practices; supervises half a dozen undergraduate students who help him in day-to-day activities. Sunish Sehgal, Research Associate, manages molecular genetics laboratory and the genomics facility, maintains genomic resources, directs projects on wheat genome mapping and applies genomics techniques to develop improved germ plasm, supervises the work of undergraduate students and visiting scientists in the laboratory. TARGET AUDIENCES: AES/HATCH; Analysis of potentially durable adult plant resistance to leaf rust and resistance to other diseases in the D genome of wheat. Collborators: Dr. Eduard Akhunov and Bill Bockus, both of KSU. KSU-Targeted Excellence; $925,000; 7/1/04-6/30/09; Bioinformatics and genome center. Various faculty on Campus. Kansas Wheat Commission; $100,000; Wheat Genetics Resource Center at Kansas State University and it contribution to the Kansas Wheat Industry. USDA; $1,000,000; 9/1/06-8/31/09; IWGSC: A physical map and sample sequencing of the homoeologous group-3 chromosomes of wheat. Collaborators: Dr. Eduard Akhunov (KSU), Dr. W. Li (SDSU-Brookings), Dr. J. Faris (USDA-ARS, Fargo, ND) USDA Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative: $29,000 Alien Chromosome Engineering and the Deployment of a Novel Source of Fusarium Head Blight Resistance in Wheat. NSF; 780,000; Physical Mapping of the Wheat D Genome. Under this project we will construct physical maps of wheat chromosomes 1D, 4D and 6D.Project PI: J Dvorak, UC Davis, CoPIs: BS Gill, MC Luo-UC Davis, Olin Anderson-USDA/ARS-Albany-Ca, Doreen Ware-CSHL-NY. International Under the umbrella of the WGGRC and the IWGSC (International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium for which I am a co-chair), we also have ongoing collaborative projects with scientists in India (Dr. Chhuneja at Punjab Agricultural Univ on wheat germ plasm development), France (Dr. Feuillet, INRA, wheat genome sequencing), Czech Republic (Dr. Dolezel on flow sorting of wheat chromosomes), and China (Dr. PD Chen, Nanjing Agricultural University, on wheat scab). Training and professional development: Dissertations completed: Nolan Rothe (2010), MS (Major Prof). Undergraduate students: Twelve students are participating in various projects. Zhijian Chang, Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Teyuan, PR China; one year assignment. Cailli Bi, Nanjing Agricultural College, China; two-year assigment. Qian Chen, Nanjing Agricultural University, PR China Nidhi Rawat, Roorkee, India Cheng Liu, University of Electronic Science and Technology, Chengdu, Sichuan, PR China. Barbara Laddomada, Italy. Target audiences: Academic personnel, producers and consumers. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.

Impacts
Our publications (listed in the next section have important outcomes and impacts leading to changes in knowledge, actions or conditions as follows: KNOWLEDGE: Brachypodium is new small genome (350Mbp) grass model that is more closely related to wheat than rice. Its chromosome relationships with wheat chromosomes were elucidated facilitating transfer of information; Molecular marker assays for Lr57/Yr40 genes will allow rapid breeding; DNA sequence of a gene rich region relealed the rules for the organization of the wheat genome. ACTIONS: Many of the techniques pioneered by WGRC scientists such as chromosome banding, in situ hybridization and integrated molecular cytogenetic methods have been adopted by many other researchers in the analysis of alien genetic variation in germplasm improvement programs. Conditions: WGRC Germplasm releases have been widely used in the development of new cultivars all over the world. In Kansas, the leading wheat cultivars Overley, Fuller and PostRock are protected from leaf rust by Lr39 gene incorporated from a wgrc germplasm release. Lr42 gene identified by WGGRC has been used in CIMMYT and material distributed all over the world.

Publications

• Gill BS and Friebe B. 2009. Cytogenetic analysis of wheat and rye genomes. In: Genetics and Genomics of the Triticeae, Plant Genetics/Genomics: Crops and Models 7 (Feuillet C and Muehlbauer GJ, Eds). Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, New York, NY. Pp. 121-135. [ISBN 978-0-387-77488-6]
• Bockus WW, Friebe B, and Gill BS. 2010. Reaction of winter wheat accessions containing Fhb3 and selected cultivars to Fusarium head blight, 2009. Plant Dis Manage Rep 4(CF012):1-2.
• Cainong JC, Zavatsky LE, Chen MS, Johnson J, Friebe B, Gill BS, and Lukaszewski A. 2010. Wheat rye T2BS 2BL-22RL recombinants with resistance to Hessian fly (H21). Crop Sci 50:920-925.
• Choulet F, Wicker T, Rustenholz C, Paux E, Salse J, Leroy P, Schlub S, Le Paslier MC, Magdelenat G, Gonthier C, Couloux A, Budak H, Breen J, Pumphrey M, Liu S, Kong X, Jia J, Gut M, Brunel D, Anderson JA, Gill BS, Appels R, Keller B, and Feuillet C. 2010. Megabase level sequencing reveals contrasted organization and evolution patterns of the wheat gene and transposable element spaces. Pant Cell 22:1686-1701.
• Kuraparthy V, Sood S, See DR, and Gill BS. 2009. Development of a PCR assay and marker assisted transfer of leaf rust and strip rust resistance genes Lr57 and Yr40 into hard red winter wheats. Crop Sci 49:120-126.
• Glover JD, Reganold JP, Bell LW, Borevitz J, Brummer EC, Buckler ES, Cox CM, Cox TS, Crews TE, Culman SW, Dehaan LR, Ericksson D, Gill BS, Holland J, Hu F, Hulke BS, Ibrahim AMH, Jackson W, Jones SS, Murray SC, Paterson AH, Ploschuk E, Sacks EJ, Snapp S, Tao D, Van Tassel DL, Wade LJ, Wyse DL, and Xu Y. 2010. Perennial questions of hydrology and climate. Response. Science 330:33-34.
• Kolluru V, Fritz AK, Paulsen GM, Bai G, Pandravada S, and Gill BS. 2010. Modeling and mapping QTL for senescence-related traits in winter wheat under high temperature. Mol Breed 26:163-175.
• Liu C, Li GR, Sehgal SK, Jia J, Yang ZJ, Friebe B, and Gill BS. 2010. Genome relationships in the genus Dasypyrum: evidence from molecular phylogenetic analysis and in situ hybridization. Plant Syst Evol 288:149-156.
• Luo MC, Ma YQ, You FM, Anderson OD, Kopecky D, Simkova H, Safar J, Dolezel J, Gill BS, McGuire PE, and Dvorak J. 2010. Feasibility of physical map construction from fingerprinted bacterial artificial chromosome libraries of polyploid plant species. BMC Genomics 11:122.
• Zhang W, Friebe B, Gill BS, and Jiang J. 2010. Centromere inactivation and epigenetic modifications of a plant cromosome with three functional centromeres. Chromosoma 119:553.
• Bi C, Chen F, Jackson L, Gill BS and Li WL. 2010. Expression of lignin biosynthetic genes in wheat during development and upon infection by fungal pathogens. Plant Mol Biol Rep [DOI: 10.1007/s11105-010-0219-8].
• Kumar S, Friebe B, and Gill BS. 2010. Fate of Aegilops speltoides derived, repetitive DNA sequences in diploid Aegilops species, wheat Aegilops amphiploids and derived chromosome addition lines. Cytogenet Genome Res [DOI:10.1159/000314552].
• Qi LL, Friebe B, Gu YQ, Wu JJ, Qian C, and Gill BS. 2010. Compact Brachypodium genome conserves centromeres of a common ancestor with wheat and rice. Funct Integ Genomics [DOI 10.1007/s10142-010-0190-3]
• Friebe B, Qi LL, Wilson DL, Chang ZJ, Seifers DL, Martin TJ, Frtz AK, and Gill BS. 2009. Wheat Thinopyrum intermedium recombinants resistant to wheat streak mosaic virus and Triticum mosaic virus. Crop Sci 49:1221-1226.
• Huang L, Brooks S, Li W, Fellers J, Nelson J, and Gill BS. 2009. Evolution of new disease specificity at a simple resistance locus in a weed crop complex: Reconstitution of the Lr21 gene in wheat. Genetics 182:595-602.
• Luo MC, Deal KR, Akhunov ED, Akhunova AR, Anderson OD, Anderson JA, Blake N, Clegg MT, Coleman-Derr D, Conley EJ, Crossman CC, Dubcovsky J, Gill BS, Gu YQ, Hadam J, Heo HY, Huo N, Lazo G, Ma Y, Matthews DE, McGuire PE, Morrell PL, Qualset CO, Renfro J, Tabanao D, Talbert LE, Tian C, Toleno DM, Warburton ML, You FM, Zhang W, and Dvorak J. 2009. Genome comparisons reveal a dominant mechanism of chromosome number reduction in grasses and accelerated genome evolution in Triticeae. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106(37):15780-15785.
• Pumphrey MO, Bai J, Laudencia-Chingcuanco D, Anderson O, and Gill BS. 2009. Nonadditive expression of homoeologous genes is established upon polyploidization in hexaploid wheat. Genetics 181:1147-1157.
• Qi LL, Friebe B, Zhang P, and Gill BS. 2009. A molecular-cytogenetic method for locating genes to pericentromeric regions facilitates a genomewide comparison of synteny between the centromeric regions of wheat and rice. Genetics 183:1235-1247.
• Sood S, Kuraparthy V, Bai G, and Gill BS. 2009. The major threshability genes, soft glume (sog) and tenacious glume (Tg), of diploid and polyploid wheat, trace their origin to independent mutations at non-orthologous loci. Theor Appl Genet 119:341-351.