International study reveals the history of wheat and its potential

Growing in controlled conditions in a glasshouse at Norwich's John Innes Centre are several varieties of wild grasses, otherwise known as Aegilops tauschii. These wispy, waist-high plants may seem unlike our modern wheat crop, but recent major international study discovered they contain the same genome. 

Scientists believe this would have crossed from wild grasses into the wheat we consume today around 8,000 years ago, making wheat essentially a hybrid of three types of wild grasses. 

Rose McNelly, a researcher at the John Innes Centre, is exploring the potential of Aegilops tauschii. "It might seem very different to wheat, but it's actually almost like a grandparent of wheat," she says. "So, it's really important in that evolution of modern wheat that we're growing and eating in our daily lives."

Her research is part of a major international study, revealing the history of wheat and looking at ways to improve its potential. 

"I'm really interested in looking at the starch in these grains, trying to find novel diversity in this wild grass, which we don't see in modern wheat," says Ms McNelly. "We're interested in trying to transfer this into modern wheat, to create starch which is more nutritious. This could potentially be really helpful nutritionally for our gut, because it might digest slightly slower and release less glucose into the bloodstream. So, it could be really helpful for disease such as diabetes."

The project is an international collaboration, with Chinese researchers also participating in key research. According to Long Mao, Principal Investigator at the Institute of Crop Science in Beijing: "We contributed two genome sequences and (are) researching evolutionary pathways of wild grass.

"Firstly, we found the species is more diverse and complicated in population composition than we originally expected. Second, we found many new diversities, for example for disease resistance and green quality, that can be used for wheat improvement."

Scientists at Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) led the study, which helped to track the levels of DNA wild grass contributes to bread wheat by wild grass. They say research is vital as wheat plays a key part in global food security. 

According to Simon Krattinger, Associate Professor at KAUST: "The important aspect here is we need to grow more wheat in the future. The estimates are that by 2050 we need to produce up to 30-50 percent more wheat than what we produced today to meet global demands." 

Wheat is a staple crop for the global population, providing around one fifth of the calories consumed globally. But modern wheat has lost much genetic diversity, compared to the original wild grass it derived from eight millennia years ago. 

"Because this wild grass has so much diversity, it's potentially a lot more resilient to climate change and just to extreme weather conditions," says Professor Krattinger. "So we can potentially transfer some of the interesting and desirable traits from this wild grass into wheat to make wheat more sustainable for the future."

Krattinger also hopes the new findings could help adapt wheat to be more disease resistant and also withstand the future climate challenges facing farmers. "By looking at the past and looking at how bread wheat evolved, we can now make predictions about what we need to do in the future to have climate resilient wheat."