By Danielle Venton
Providing vital food for billions of people, wheat cannot afford a
sick-day off. It must resist new diseases, adapt to environmental change and
flourish in the face of viruses, bacteria, insects and fungi.
Cultivated since the dawn of civilization, wheat must now enter the
21st century.

The race for survival
The keys to flourishing wheat fields are diverse and effective genes,
found in wheat?s gargantuan genetic toolbox: a DNA collection containing an
astounding 17 billion base pairs.

?If you can find the right genes and the right alleles for a given
genome, you can select the qualities you want in a new wheat variety,? says
Philippe Leroy of Génétique Diversité & Ecophysiologie des Céréales in
Clermont-Ferrand, France.

?You don?t cultivate the same type of wheat in the North of Europe as
the South of Europe or as in China,? Leroy explains. ?Each area has its own
strains, its own diseases and climate, and therefore each needs its own
wheat varieties.?


Hunting for the right stuff
To streamline the gene selection process, Leroy and his colleagues,
Matthieu Reichstadt and Franck Giacomoni, are developing a system that
automates the hunt for new genes in the wheat genome.

Called the TriAnnotPipeline, the project is part of the International
Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, which aims to accelerate the creation of
new wheat varieties.

These new varieties can be engineered to be more resilient to
environmental change or better suited to other uses, such as bio-fuel, Leroy
says.

After sequencing, the TriAnnotPipeline automatically searches
databases for genes common to other crops, and also notes sequences that
look like new genes. Researchers can then isolate these areas of interest
for further study.

A lengthy process, Leroy admits, but worth it to help ensure our
grandchildren can enjoy their bread and pasta as much as we do.

The TriAnnotPipeline project began in 2002 and is available on several
computing platforms, including the AuverGrid, in Clermont-Ferrand, France.
Since 2006 the TriAnnotPipeline has been supported by a European grant
called LifeGrid, coordinated by the Conseil Regional d?Auvergne in France.


[www.isgtw.org]