Background
Wheat breeding has led to reduced genetic diversity over time. Through domestication and modern breeding practices, especially backcrossing, breeders often preserve traits from elite cultivars only, which results in losing or overlooking other valuable traits from landraces and wild relatives. This genetic uniformity creates a risk that the next major pandemic could affect crops, not people. The key to avoiding this lies in exploring landraces—wheat’s wild relatives—because they carry novel alleles that can boost resilience and adaptability. My research thus focuses on co-mingling adaptive linkage blocks from modern PNW wheat cultivars into landraces. These blocks can help the new lines with at least 20-30% genetic content from landraces adapt to the unique PNW environment. Along the way, we may also discover other beneficial traits from landraces that could enhance the resilience and productivity of modern cultivars.
Objectives
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To identify the linkage blocks that are adaptive to PNW region.
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To develop wheat lines suited to the PNW environment by assembling adaptive blocks into landraces, ensuring at least 20-30% of their genetic content is from landraces to explore novel alleles.
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To accelerate the breeding process by using molecular markers to achieve desired results within 3 crossings, instead of traditional 7-8 backcrosses.
Project Workflow
Using genome-wide data from U.S. wheat cultivars, we identified approximately 50 adaptive linkage blocks associated with Pacific Northwest (PNW) environmental fitness. These blocks, enriched for genes related to disease resistance, yield, and quality, are being introgressed from PNW-adapted cultivars into diverse landraces through controlled crosses and marker-assisted selection. Greenhouse crosses produced F₁ and F₂ generations, and KASP-based genotyping is being used to identify F₂ plants carrying the desired adaptive segments. The populations have now advanced to the F₃ generation, and F₃:₄ lines are being grown for seed increase. The next phase will evaluate these lines in multi-location field trials across PNW sub-regions to assess yield, adaptation, stress tolerance, and grain quality.
Expected Outcomes
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Unlock the untapped diversity of landraces
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Identification of potential beneficial traits of interest
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Regional adaptation of the wheat cultivars in the PNW region
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Helps breeding program leading to the development of wheat varieties