Institute for Cereal Crops Improvement
— TAU —
The central concern of the research at the ICCI is to conserve the genetic diversity of wild cereals and in particular the ancestral plants of wheat and barley, with the aim to utilize the material for cereal crops improvement. Situated at the center of origin of wheat and barley, the ICCI draws its strength from access to the entire lineage of the wheat and barley progenitors, which encompass the full range of natural diversity from which domesticated wheat and barley have evolved. In addition to access to natural populations (in situ), the ICCI holds a rich ex situ genebank of wild cereals accessions that were collected within the boundaries of Israel over the last 40 years. This unique biological material is used by the ICCI as well as many researchers around the globe. Research emphasis at the ICCI includes genomics (e.g. sequencing of the wild wheat genome) and genotyping, identification of rust resistance sources (e.g. we have identified resistance sources to the stem rust race Ug99) and other desirable traits, and utilization of the material to improve wheat through cross breeding.
Role within AGENT
Within the AGENT project TAU will make the following contributions
- Selection of precision collection of 500 wild emmer and 500 wild barley accessions for genotyping and phenotyping (WP2, WP3).
- Collection of 100 new samples each of wild wheat and wild barley from in-situ conservation site (WP2, WP3).
- Stripe rust resistance screening of the wild emmer collection in green-house and in the field (WP3).
- Preparation of historical data of rust resistance (WP3).
- General phenotyping in the field (WP3).
- GWAS (WP4).
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