Results & Resources

The AE Watkins bread wheat landrace collection and the diverse Core Set

Accessions of the AE Watkins landrace collection were collected from markets from 32 countries across the world. From the over 800 lines of this collection a core set of 119 accessions has been selected, which captures the majority of the genetic diversity (Wingen et al, TAG, 2014).
Information on accession names, country of origin, growth habit and ancestral group can be downloaded here:

Individual accessions are available from SeedStor.

Population development - The Bread Wheat Landrace NAM Panel

The bread wheat landrace NAM (nested association mapping) panel was developed as a set of bi-parental segregating F4 single-seed populations from crosses of spring wheat accession 'Paragon' with diverse wheat germplasm, particularly from the AE Watkins core set. Population development was conducted within the WGIN and the WISP project. As of January 2016 there were 127 Watkins populations and many Gediflux populations under development.

NAM panel: SNP genotyping and genetic mapping

Populations were genotyped, mostly employing KASPar SNP markers, and genetic maps were developed (Wingen et al. Genetics 2017). In total, 90 bi-parental population maps are currently available:

NAM panel: Trait Data

Phenotypic data from JIC Church Farm field trials is available as spread sheets for different resources:

Wheat collections: A changing set of NAM populations is grown every year in field trials at at JIC:

NAM panel: QTL mapping

QTL analyses were conducted on the trait data from the NAM populations:

The individual QTL plots can be inspected here:

DFW Landrace Toolkit: NIL pairs developed by MAS for QTL regions

Selected QTL regions were introgressed by Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) into UK reference cultivar 'Paragon', which is also the common parent of the NAM panel. Back-crossing was started from a RIL line of the NAM panel. Final BC2F2 NILs are BC3 equivalents and have approx. 87% Paragon background.
Performance of BC2F2 NIL pairs, which were selected by MAS to have opposing parental alleles in the targeted QTL region, is compared in field trials (data not available yet).
NILs were genotyped with the 35k Bread Wheat Axiom Chip and the markers scores arranged along the whole genome assembly. The graphical genotypes can be inspected on the following webpages:

DFW Breeders' Diversity Toolkit

A selection of highly performing NIL pairs, or similar, tested in multi-environment trials. This resource has a dedicated page here

Subsets of the Bread Wheat Landrace NAM

To answer specific questions, individual lines with similar agronomic characteristics can be pulled out of the NAM panel and put together into NAM subsets. These subsets can be better adaptated to a specific environment, e.g. selected for a fitting flowering time, but will still carry genetic diversity from different founder parents. Subsets have been genotyped on the 35k breeders array, and genotype - trait associations can be identified in a genome wide association mapping.

The following subsets are currently available:
  • India NAM subset 2016.1: Phenotyped and genotyped as part of the INEW project.
  • UK NAM subset 2016.1: Phenotyped and genotyped as part of the INEW project.
  • Argentinia NAM subset 2016.1 Phenotyped (and genotyped) as part of the IWYP HI project "Genetic Diversity Toolkit to Maximise Harvest Index by Controlling the Duration of Developmental Phases". Spreadsheet with population and line names: DFW_WP1_UK_NAM_subset_2018.1.xlsx
  • UK NAM subset 2018.1: For use in DFW WP1: 194 lines (16 lines from 25 populations) with similar height and flowering time as the 'Paragon' parent. Spreadsheet with population and line names: DFW_WP1_UK_NAM_subset_2018.1.xlsx

MTA

The non-restrictive Material Transfer Agreement needed to use our resources is available here: MTA template