Wheat an essential crop for human civilization faces a threat from several biotic and abiotic challenges. Genetic improvement of wheat against such threats is urgently required for the global food security. Genetic improvement of wheat requires identification of new genes and alleles and their fast-paced integration into the elite cultivars.

Bread wheat has a narrow genetic base due to domestication bottleneck and rare hybridization events that were resulted in the evolution of bread wheat. Einkorn wheat a diploid ancient grain wheat belongs to the first set of domesticated crops. With simple diploid cereal genome (2n=2x=14; ~5Gb; AA) and untapped genetic diversity in its germplasm, einkorn wheat presents an excellent model system for gene discovery and deployment for wheat improvement.

We integrated germplasm resources and genomics tools to develop high quality genomics resources for einkorn wheat. Four reference level genomes are already assembled, and work is in progress to develop a pangenome of most diverse einkorn genomes.

These genomic resources have resulted in identification of new genes and alleles against wheat diseases such as leaf rust, powdery mildew and fusarium head blight.