GCP Wheat meeting:

a summary

Hyderabad, September 21-22, 2011

GCP Wheat projects

G3008.01 Generating new wheat germpalsm with enhanced drought/heat tolerance using AB genome genetic diversity

G3008.08 Breeder-friendly high throughput phenotyping tools to select for adaptive traits in drought environments

G7010.02.01: Wheat breeding and selection strategies to combine and validate QTLs for WUE and heat tolerance in China

G7010.02.02: Wheat breeding and selection strategies to combine and validate QTLs for WUE and heat tolerance in India

G7009.01 Natural variation in the transcritional regulation of drought responses in wheat

G3008.08 Breeder-friendly high throughput

phenotyping tools to select for adaptive traits

in drought environments

Aims to identify physiological traits or trait values for defined drought stresses

• phenotyping: ICARDA & CSIRO Australia

• 20 – 25 trials of 200 genotypes x 2 years x 72 traits (all characterized with markers, SSRs & DArTs)

Opportunity

• Phenotyping manual has been developed – the Wheat CI also have a manual (circulate & compare)

• Learn from this experience in wider Wheat CI project

G3008.01 Generating new wheat germplasm with

enhanced drought/heat tolerance using AB genome

genetic diversity

Materials developed:

• 1000 DHs (emmer based hexaploids)

• 1000’s of F3 – F6 (by end of the project in 2012)

• Approx 300 primaries based on 108 emmers x 3 A. tauschii

How to phenotype close to 3,000 lines?

Opportunity

• Wheat CI in India can test at key phenotyping sites

• ICARDA to test DH lines & primaries

• CSIRO (Fernanda Dreccer) DH

• PBI Sydney Uni to test DH & primaries

Wheat Challenge Initiative: Molecular breeding and selection

strategies to combine and validate QTLs for improving WUE

and heat tolerance of wheat in India & China

India: Vinod Prabhu (coordinator) – IARI (Delhi)

Virinder Singh Sohu – PAU (Ludhiana)

PC Mishra - J.N.K.V.V.(Powarkheda)

SC Misra – Agharkar Research Institute, (Pune)

NK Singh – NRCPB (Delhi)

China: Ruilian Jing (coordinator) – CAAS (Beijing)

Xiumin Chen - Hebei Academy of Agricultural Sciences (HAAS)

Meirong Sun - Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences (SAAS)

Zhenlu Wu - Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences (XAAS)

Activities

1. Evaluation of CIMMYT’s international drought tolerance reference set (200 + lines) at key locations. Validate known QTLs in each target environment

2. MABC - transfer known international QTLs and locally identified QTLs into elite local germplasm

3. Use MARS to develop elite drought & heat tolerant materials

Reference set evaluation

India:

Reference set (from CIMMYT) of 200 lines tested at 4 sites, 2 reps and series of physiological traits & yield measured

A subset identified for more intensive characterization in 2011/12 and for use as donors for backcrossing

Reference set evaluation

China: The reference set of 145 lines plus local

cultivars has been tested 2010/11 at 7 sites.

Observation: most sites single row plots, difficulty of planting date (winter or spring), large size of set

Plans

Develop a country subset for 2011/12 + best

adapted lines at each site

Known QTL introgression

India:

15 sources from the reference set crossed to 4

elite Indian backgrounds. Now at BC1F2 (the

BC1F1 was sown over summer).

A local population C306/WH157 is now in the

second year of phenotyping

Known QTL introgression

China 11 BC3F4 and BC3F5 populations evaluated in

Beijing, Shanxi and Gansu Provinces in 2010/11 to validate target QTLs detected in the DH population (Hanxuan 10 × Lumai 14) and other genetic populations

17 Chinese elite cultivars crossed key reference set materials. A total of 1224 crosses have been made. Populations at F2, F3, and BC1F1

Development of MARS materials

India:

Planning 18 crosses x 2 reps x 4 sites in

2011/12

Reduce to 6 key crosses (>200

progeny/cross) and test in larger

plots/more reps to establish best possible

phenotype

Development of MARS materials

China: Each partner has developed two populations:

CAAS – F2:3 (260 lines) & F2

Yunchen – F3:5 (600 lines) & F2:3 (500 lines)

Hebei – 2 x F2:3 populations (of 300 lines each)

Changzhi – 2 x F2:3 populations (of 300 lines each)

Xinjiang – F2:4 (1000 lines) & F2:3 (300 lines)

Phenotyping in 2011/12: possible reduction to 6 crosses

Germplasm sharing among

partners

Need an umbrella document from the GCP

describing the nature of wheat CI partnership

- Listing participant organizations and staff

- List germplasm to be shared

- Approved by Dr Swapan Datta

- Develop project specific MTA that covers all partners

- Chinese position?

Data sharing

• Each group to provide a list of data sets in 2 weeks with data to follow

• Data managers have been appointed in each project (India/China/Australia) to manage data quality & upload into GCP wheat central

• Need to agree on a Wheat CI data dictionary to standardize trait capture (RT to send the existing Indo-Australia ICIS data dictionary to all partners)

• Indo-Australian use case study database needs to be made public and posted on GCP wheat central at CIMMYT (RT to discuss with partners in February)

Data managers presentations

Tariq Chattha – PBI pedigree & phenotypic data loaded

some molecular data

- time to produce germplasm lists needs to reduce

- need more user friendly molecular data upload

- need data query tools

Manoj Singh (NRCPB) – highly successful user case: Indo-Australia wheat program

- local databases at all nodes and a central data base set up and populated

- data sharing led to conversion of central data base from ms Access to MySQL to increase capacity

• Great demonstration of field book and the

use of the Samsung 10.1 Galaxy tablet for

recording field data.

• RT to write a letter to ICAR requesting this

for Wheat CI in India for local purchase

Fingerprinting

• SNP validation set (94 lines expanded from 72 initially identified)

• 125 Indian lines, 125 Chinese plus 30 globally important genotypes (hopefully performing well in India/China) to be genotyped with the same SNPs

• RT to facilitate development of the lists with Ruilian & Vinod

Other genotyping data (pedigrees/markers used)

Help with genotype selection for testing/assembly of new subsets for genotyping

• Vinod/Ruilian to coordinate nationally

• Indo/Australian ACIAR data available

• CIMMYT & ICARDA to provide relevant sets

Ontology

• The Wheat group to provide current trait dictionary

• Good value seen by all in the new format

Optimas demo

• Value of the tool recognized

• A need to practice with local data

Capacity building

• Level 1 training (basic ICIS use & data

management): not needed in India but required

in China

• Level 2 training (tool use, managing genotyping

data, molecular analysis) needed by India

• Training the trainers is suggested

• In county training essential to ensure relevant

people can attend

Communities of Practice

Confusion about what this CoP

• Already have global CoPs in wheat (eg Graingenes)

• Need lower level/less threatening CoP

• Suggest starting small with a GCP wheat CoP and working upwards

- post data & information on website

- post comments/queries

- monthly email up-date of contents to remind people to look

- needs a person to coordinate