CSREES Renews Grant to Sequence Wheat Chromosome

The United States Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) announced that it has renewed a grant to Kansas State University (KSU) to complete the physical map of wheat chromosome 3A. CSREES says that the renewal of another $1 million will allow KSU researchers to finish the map by August 2010, enabling access to the approximately 5,400 genes located on the chromosome. Armed with such a map, scientists will be able to isolate and clone genes that are responsible for resistance to preharvest sprouting, aluminum toxicity, diseases such as Fusarium head scab and Septoria blotch, and other traits underlying yield, quality and human health.

CSREES funded the KSU team, headed by Bikram Gill, in 2006 for a $1 million pilot project to study a novel approach using cytogenetic stocks and chromosome flow cytometry for genome physical mapping and sequencing in wheat.

For more information, read http://www.csrees.usda.gov/newsroom/news/2008news/09241_wheat_chromosome.html