Increasing the genetic diversity of wheat is key to its future production in terms of increasing yields, resistance to diseases and adaptability to fluctuations in global climate. The use of the progenitor species of wheat and also its wild relatives uniquely provide a route to vastly increase the genetic variation available to wheat breeders for the development of new, superior wheat varieties.

Over the last 12 years the Nottingham BBSRC Wheat Research Centre has generated hundreds of new introgressions in wheat from eight of the wild relatives of wheat-Aegilops caudata, Aegilops speltoides, Amblyopyrum muticum, Secale cereale, Thinopyrum bessarabicum, Thinopyrum elongatum, Triticum timopheevii and Triticum urartu. To date, nearly 300 of these introgression lines have been deposited at the Germplasm Resource Unit at the John Innes Centre. These lines are free of IP to both the private and commercial sectors.

The introgression lines have been characterised using chromosome-specific KASP markers and genomicin situhybridisation. The KASP markers allow: (i) identification of the introgressions, (ii) characterisation of the introgressions in terms of size, (iii) identification of the zygosity of the introgression, whether heterozygous or homozygous, (iv) identification of the wheat chromosome the introgression has recombined with.

Phenotyping of the first homozygous lines released have identified introgressions with resistance to Fusarium head blight, all three rusts (including UG99), tan spot and powdery mildew, all of which are being introduced into commercial breeding programmes. Introgressions have also been identified carrying unique genetic variation for flowering morphology traits for hybrid wheat breeding, increased photosynthetic capacity and heat tolerance.