Scientists from the InternationalMaizeand WheatImprovement Center
(CIMMYT) and the Universidad Aut??noma Agraria Antonio Narro analyzed
bread wheat landraces to discover traits for resistance to the impacts
of climate change.

The team looked at seven climactic variables, including mean
temperature, maximum temperature, precipitation, precipitation
seasonality, heat index of mean temperature, heat index of maximum
temperature, and drought index using genome-environment associations
(GEA) and environmental genome-wide association scans (EnvGWAS), which
have traditionally been poorly applied in this type of research.

From a sample of 990 bread wheat landraces from the CIMMYT genebank,
the scientists discovered proteins associated with tolerance to drought
and heat. With this discovery, new genotypeswith resistant alleles can
be selected for breeding programs to produce resistant varieties adapted
to extreme environments and the impacts of climate change.

[www.cimmyt.org]