The elusive wheat genome - the most important crop globally - will be cracked within the next three years. Indian scientists have joined 16 other nations - the US, the UK, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Norway, Israel, Turkey, Russia, China, Japan, Australia and Argentina - in the initiative.
The department of biotechnology (DBT) has sanctioned about Rs 34 crore for over four years to three institutes - Punjab Agriculture University, ICAR and Delhi University - for the project.
Prof Nagendra Kumar Singh from ICAR's National Research Center on Plant Biotechnology in New Delhi said, "The project is likely to be completed in five years. But, we will crack the code within three years."
Wheat has 21 chromosomes of which one will be decoded by the 21 Indian scientists. The wheat genome is 42 times bigger than rice genome.
" India had bumper wheat production of 84 million tons this year. Once we have cracked its genetic code, we can develop disease-resistant wheat faster. Brown and yellow rust diseases are a big threat to wheat," Prof Singh said.
The department of biotechnology (DBT) has sanctioned about Rs 34 crore for over four years to three institutes - Punjab Agriculture University, ICAR and Delhi University - for the project.
Prof Nagendra Kumar Singh from ICAR's National Research Center on Plant Biotechnology in New Delhi said, "The project is likely to be completed in five years. But, we will crack the code within three years."
Wheat has 21 chromosomes of which one will be decoded by the 21 Indian scientists. The wheat genome is 42 times bigger than rice genome.
" India had bumper wheat production of 84 million tons this year. Once we have cracked its genetic code, we can develop disease-resistant wheat faster. Brown and yellow rust diseases are a big threat to wheat," Prof Singh said.
On Wednesday, 31 Indian scientists also cracked the genetic code of arhar ( pigeonpea or red gram), the second most important pulse crop of India. This is the first plant genome sequenced indigenously. Now, this will help faster development of high yielding, disease and insect-resistant varieties of arhar for higher productivity and lower prices of pulses.
The scientists have identified 47,004 protein coding genes in the arhar genome, of which 1,213 genes are for disease resistance and 152 genes for tolerance to drought, heat and salinity that make it a hardy crop.
Asha, the genome of popular arhar variety, was assembled using long sequence reads of 454-FLX second generation sequencing technology resulting in 511 million base pairs of high quality genome sequence information.
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