Bioplatforms Australia, an organisation established under the Commonwealth Government National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and further supported with resources from the Education Investment Fund Super Science initiative will invest in the creation of a Genomics Data Resource on behalf of the Australian and international wheat research community.

Wheat is Australia’s most important grain crop valued at over $5 billion annually. It is a staple food crop for the world’s population and Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters. The national wheat dataset will combine existing data with new genomic, proteomic and metabolomic analyses and form a vital resource for the entire wheat community from laboratory researchers to crop breeders.

Improvement to new wheat varieties through plant breeding is essential to drive future increases in wheat crop yields. The productivity of Australia’s wheat crop, impacted on by drought and salinity, defense against fungal attack and improved grain quality will be driven by advanced breeding technologies, largely based upon an enhanced knowledge of wheat genomics and trait discovery.

The investment builds on successful research programs heavily supported by the Grains Research Development Corporation (GRDC) at a range of institutes including several Australian Universities, CSIRO, Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and Victoria Department of Primary Industry.

There are 21 chromosomes in wheat and investments from GRDC and Bioplatforms Australia will define the structure of one chromosome in detail, as part of the Australian contribution to the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC).

Professor Rudi Appels from Murdoch University, Western Australia is a co-chair of the IWGSC and he indicated that the investment was a major international contribution and will help Australian scientists gain early access to equivalent information coming from international groups working on the other 20 chromosome of wheat. “The Australian investment focuses on chromosome 7A which codes for several important yield genes that are expected to be particularly important under drought stress” said Professor Appels.

The new investment will also provide genome sequence information of 16 wheat varieties of interest to Australian research groups and breeding programs. Together with the availability of the reference genome, the extensive genomic information on peak breeding lines will accelerate the identification and isolation of new traits for breeders to select for new wheat varieties. It is imperative that the wheat research and breeding communities have access to powerful genome resources to ensure Australia’s wheat productivity remains globally competitive.

When asked about the value of the Bioplatforms Australia project Professor Peter Langridge, CEO of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, said “Breeding has underpinned productivity gains in Australian agriculture and our breeders have been leaders in the application of new technologies.  The new sequencing data will give a detailed view of variation present in Australian germplasm and raise breeding to a new level of sophistication.”

The hostile Australian environment with scarce water supply and poor soil quality is compounded by the risks associated with a range of known pathogens such as stripe and stem rust, tan spot, glume blotch, septoria leaf blotch, Rhizoctonia bare patch and crown rot. As such Bioplatforms Australia will facilitate the generation of biomolecular datasets from a diverse range of wheat pathogens and their direct interaction with wheat. A more complete understanding of pathogen-host interaction will provide a framework for intervention. The integrated approach proposed in this component of the dataset creation will enhance Australia’s Systems Biology capability and facilitate a sophisticated approach to “omics” studies more broadly than this individual project.

John Manners, the Deputy Chief of CSIRO Plant Industry is a principle co-ordinator of the Bioplatforms Australia Wheat Pathogenomics initiative. Dr Manners said “This initiative will, for the first time, allow us to compare the molecular armoury employed by a diverse range of pathogen types on a single host, in this case wheat. These pathogens are highly adaptable and this knowledge will enable us to develop durable molecular resistance strategies for wheat into the future.”



Contact

Dr Anna Fitzgerald, Bioplatforms Australia
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Tel: +61 2 9850 1174
Web: www.bioplatforms.com

About Bioplatforms Australia

Bioplatforms Australia is responsible for building scientific infrastructure in the specialist fields of genomics, proteomics, metabolomics and bioinformatics. It supports Australian life science research with crucial investments in state-of-the-art technologies, cutting edge expertise and the establishment of strategic genomic data resources. Investment funding has been provided by the Commonwealth Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and the 2009 Super Science initiative. Co-investments have also been made by State Governments, research institutes and commercial entities.