French government announce major new investment into wheat research

National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) reports:

The French government announced a significant new investment in wheat research this week that will be part of an enormous public-private research initiative encompassing nine years of work by 26 French partners dedicating an estimated $55 million.

The announcement Wednesday, made by the French ministers of research and higher education, agriculture and economic stimulus, will give approximately $12.6 million in grant funds to BREEDWHEAT, a long-term series of projects coordinated by French researcher Catherine Feuillet, and done in consultation with international research organizations CIMMYT and ICARDA.

The project's work will focus on the combination of structural and functional genomics, genetics and ecophysiology with high throughput phenotyping and genotyping to identify markers and genes underlying yield and quality traits under abiotic and biotic stress.

Among other things, BREEDWHEAT will characterize and tap unexploited genetic resources to expand the diversity of the elite germplasm and develop new breeding methods. This will include sequencing of wheat chromosome 1B.

In making the announcement, French officials cited many of the reasons the U.S. government also continues to invest in wheat research: growing food demand at a time producers are called to use fewer inputs and yet deal with new and emerging diseases and pests. They stressed investments into long-term breeding through BREEDWHEAT will help ensure sufficient supplies of wheat for current and future generations.

The French are significant participants in the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) effort to complete a reference sequence of the bread wheat genome, which a number of U.S. state wheat organizations also support.

Recently, NAWG, U.S. Wheat Associates, the North American Millers' Association, American Bakers Association and a large group of state wheat organizations wrote a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack urging U.S. support for greater funding for sequencing of the wheat genome and other wheat research initiatives through the G20, which recently held discussions that encompassed ag research.