Plant & Animal Genomes XIII Conference

January 15-19, 2005
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

The MASwheat Project. Impact Of Genomics On Wheat Breeding

Marcelo A. Soria¹ , Jim A. Anderson² , Gina Brown-Guedira³ , Kim G. Campbell⁴ , Elias M. Elias⁵ , Allan K. Fritz³ , Bikram S. Gill³ , Kulvinder S. Gill⁴ , Scott Haley⁶ , Shahryar F. Kianian⁵ , Kim Kidwell⁴ , Nora L. V. Lapitan⁶ , Herbert Ohm⁷ , Jamie D. Sherman⁸ , Mark E. Sorrells⁹ , Ed Souza¹⁰ , Luther Talbert⁸ , Jorge Dubcovsky¹

¹  Dept. of Agronomy & Range Science. Univ. of California, Davis. Davis, CA 95616

²  Dept. of Agronomy & Plant Genetics. Univ. of Minnesota. 411 Borlaug Hall, St Paul, MN 55108

³  USDA-ARS, and Dept. of Agronomy & Plant Pathology. Kansas State Univ., Manhattan, KS 66506

⁴  USDA-ARS and Dept. of Crop and Soil Sciences Washington State Univ., Pullman, WA 99164

⁵  Dept. of Plant Sciences, North Dakota State Univ., Fargo, ND 58105

⁶  Dept. of Soil and Crop Sciences. Colorado State Univ., C101 Plant Sciences. Fort Collins, CO 80526

⁷  Dept. of Agronomy. Purdue Univ., 1150 Lilly Hall. West Lafayette, IN 47907

⁸  Dept. of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology. Montana State Univ., Bozeman. 406, Bozeman, MT 59717

⁹  Dept. of Plant Breeding and Genetics. Cornell Univ. 240 Emerson Hall. Ithaca, NY 14853-1902

¹⁰  Aberdeen Research and Extension Center. Univ. of Idaho. 1693 South 2700 West. Aberdeen, ID 83210

In 2001 twelve wheat breeding centers and research laboratories formed a consortium designed to increase the use of marker assisted selection (MAS) in public wheat breeding programs. The strategy of the project is to introgress by backcrossing more than 23 disease resistance genes and 21 quality-related gene variants in approximately 100 adapted parents from different market classes. The MASwheat project has completed the introgression of valuable genes into 78 wheat lines, and 178 lines will be completed by Sept. 2005 when the project finishes. These new lines include adapted cultivars belonging to most of the US market classes. The consortium also developed new molecular markers, which were made publicly available in 23 scientific papers and through the project web site (http://maswheat.ucdavis.edu). This web site includes laboratory protocols for more than 22 traits, together with educational material. The impact of MAS methods in wheat breeding was discussed in 73 presentations to wheat growers, industry, and research meetings. This project resulted in a better integration of public wheat breeding programs and molecular laboratories, and in the development of the trained personnel and expertise required to implement MAS tools in active breeding programs. The MASwheat project also became the starting point of a more ambitious initiative that will integrate most of the wheat breeders in the US and the USDA genotyping centers in forward-breeding MAS strategies, and that will develop new markers for complex agronomic and quality traits.