Establishing the A. E. Watkins landrace cultivar collection as a resource for systematic gene discovery in bread wheat

Luzie U. Wingen; Simon Orford; Richard Goram; Michelle Leverington‑Waite; Lorelei Bilham; Theofania S. Patsiou; Mike Ambrose; Jo Dicks; Simon Griffiths

doi:10.1007/s00122-014-2344-5

Establishing the A. E. Watkins landrace cultivar collection as a resource for systematic gene discovery in bread wheat

Luzie U. Wingen^*, Simon Orford, Richard Goram, Michelle Leverington‑Waite, Lorelei Bilham, Theofania S. Patsiou, Mike Ambrose, Jo Dicks, Simon Griffiths

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

66 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In the 1930s A. E. Watkins acquired landrace cultivars of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) from official channels of the board of Trade in London, many of which originated from local markets in 32 countries. The geographic distribution of the 826 landrace cultivars of the current collection, here called the Watkins collection, covers many Asian and European countries and some from Africa. The cultivars were genotyped with 41 microsatellite markers in order to investigate the genetic diversity and population structure of the collection. A high level of genetic diversity was found, higher than in a collection of modern European winter bread wheat varieties from 1945 to 2000. Furthermore, although weak, the population structure of the Watkins collection reveals nine ancestral geographical groupings. An exchange of genetic material between ancestral groups before commercial wheat-breeding started would be a possible explanation for this. The increased knowledge regarding the diversity of the Watkins collection was used to develop resources for wheat research and breeding, one of them a core set, which captures the majority of the genetic diversity detected. The understanding of genetic diversity and population structure together with the availability of breeding resources should help to accelerate the detection of new alleles in the Watkins collection.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1831-1842
Number of pages	12
Journal	Theoretical and Applied Genetics
Volume	127
Issue number	8
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-014-2344-5
Publication status	Published - 5 Jun 2014
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Part of this research was supported by funding from the UK Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) through a grant for the Wheat Genetic Improvement Network (WGIN), grant number IF0146 and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) through a grant for the Wheat Pre-Breeding Lola, grant number: BB/I002545/1.

Funding Information:
We thank JIC GRU for seeds of the Watkins bread wheat LCs. Part of this research was supported by funding from he UK Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) through a grant for the Wheat Genetic Improvement Network (WGIN) and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) through a grant for the Wheat Pre-Breeding Lola and the Wheat Improvement Strategic Programme (WISP). We thank four anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments on the paper.

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2014.

Keywords

A high level of genetic diversity was found in the A. E. Watkins bread wheat landrace collection
Genotypic information was used to determine the population structure and to develop germplasm resources

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10.1007/s00122-014-2344-5

Cite this

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title = "Establishing the A. E. Watkins landrace cultivar collection as a resource for systematic gene discovery in bread wheat",

abstract = "In the 1930s A. E. Watkins acquired landrace cultivars of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) from official channels of the board of Trade in London, many of which originated from local markets in 32 countries. The geographic distribution of the 826 landrace cultivars of the current collection, here called the Watkins collection, covers many Asian and European countries and some from Africa. The cultivars were genotyped with 41 microsatellite markers in order to investigate the genetic diversity and population structure of the collection. A high level of genetic diversity was found, higher than in a collection of modern European winter bread wheat varieties from 1945 to 2000. Furthermore, although weak, the population structure of the Watkins collection reveals nine ancestral geographical groupings. An exchange of genetic material between ancestral groups before commercial wheat-breeding started would be a possible explanation for this. The increased knowledge regarding the diversity of the Watkins collection was used to develop resources for wheat research and breeding, one of them a core set, which captures the majority of the genetic diversity detected. The understanding of genetic diversity and population structure together with the availability of breeding resources should help to accelerate the detection of new alleles in the Watkins collection.",

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author = "Wingen, {Luzie U.} and Simon Orford and Richard Goram and Michelle Leverington‑Waite and Lorelei Bilham and Patsiou, {Theofania S.} and Mike Ambrose and Jo Dicks and Simon Griffiths",

note = "Funding Information: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Part of this research was supported by funding from the UK Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) through a grant for the Wheat Genetic Improvement Network (WGIN), grant number IF0146 and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) through a grant for the Wheat Pre-Breeding Lola, grant number: BB/I002545/1. Funding Information: We thank JIC GRU for seeds of the Watkins bread wheat LCs. Part of this research was supported by funding from he UK Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) through a grant for the Wheat Genetic Improvement Network (WGIN) and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) through a grant for the Wheat Pre-Breeding Lola and the Wheat Improvement Strategic Programme (WISP). We thank four anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments on the paper. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2014.",

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AU - Bilham, Lorelei

AU - Patsiou, Theofania S.

AU - Ambrose, Mike

AU - Dicks, Jo

AU - Griffiths, Simon

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Establishing the A. E. Watkins landrace cultivar collection as a resource for systematic gene discovery in bread wheat

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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