Designing Future Wheat

The BBSRC funded Designing Future Wheat Institute Strategic Programme (ISP), spans eight research institutes and universities and aims to develop new wheat germplasm containing the next generation of key traits.

Building on this research we will then provide this new germplasm in a readily accessible and referenced form to commercial crop breeders and the plant science community.

Wheat is one of the most important global crops and is grown on more land than any other commercial crop. It currently provides 20% of total calories consumed by humans daily worldwide.

As the global population increases towards 10 billion people, with most increased consumption expected to occur in developing countries, it is anticipated that the world will need to produce 60% more wheat by 2050 to meet global demand. Since it takes between 15 and 20 years for current research to improve wheat varieties grown in farmers’ fields, it is imperative that we act now to address problems facing us in the future.

The Designing Future Wheat ISP is a fully integrated, cohesive national UK wheat research programme involving more than 25 groups of scientists across Rothamsted Research (RRES), the John Innes Centre (JIC) and Earlham Institute (EI), with additional contributions from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), Cambridge, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), Cambridge and the Universities of Bristol and Nottingham.

Designing Future Wheat Institute partners