Czech scientists develop method to make cultivation of climate change-resistant wheat strains faster

Scientists from Czechia and Estonia have developed a new method for determining the recombination frequency in the wheat genome that will make crossing wheat with its wild cousins easier. This should enable climate change-resistant varieties of the crop to be created more quickly.

The scientists from the Institute of Experimental Botany in Olomouc (part of the Czech Academy of Sciences) and Tallinn University of Technology identified so-called "recombination hotspots", sites on the wheat genome where the exchange of genetic information is six times higher than normal, meaning the success rate of transferring beneficial genes from wild species of wheat to their cultivated cousins will significantly increase. The discovery will enable more efficient breeding, easier manipulation of the genome, and enrichment of the wheat gene pool to better cope with climate change.

Due to climate change, a growing world population, soil depletion and other factors, scientists say that it is crucial to breed more resistant varieties of wheat as quickly as possible. One way of doing this is to enrich wheat with genes from its wild relatives, which contain properties such as resistance to diseases, drought, and soil salinity, that intensively bred plants have gradually lost.