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 its wild relatives uniquely provides a route to vastly increase the genetic variation available to wheat breeders for the development of new, superior wheat varieties.

Over the last 14 years the Nottingham Wheat Research Centre has generated hundreds of new introgressions from eight of the wild relatives of wheat with nearly 300 introgression lines deposited at the Germplasm Resource Unit at the John Innes Centre. The introgression lines have been characterised using chromosome-specific KASP markers, genomic in situ hybridisation and skim sequencing.

Phenotyping of the first homozygous lines released has 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.

The wild relatives of wheat are also providing routes to investigate other aspects of biology. We are using a new promotor of homoeologous recombination to increase the number of introgressions while sequencing is providing information on sites of homoeologous recombination between wheat and its wild relatives.

Fully annotated, chromosome level assemblies of Triticum timopheevii and Aegilops mutica are enabling investigation of the gene(s) underlying some of the traits identified in the introgression lines.