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The International Wheat Genome Sequence Consortium (IWGSC – www.wheatgenome.org ), an international consortium of wheat growers, public and private breeders and scientists, strongly disagrees with implications that the sequence reads made available by a UK team, led by Professor Neil Hall, represent in any way the sequence of the wheat genome or that this work is comparable to genome sequences for rice, maize, or soybean.

An Associated Press (AP) story published on 27 August 2010, in London, entitled “Scientists: We've cracked wheat's genetic code”, reports that Neil Hall’s team has “decoded the genetic sequence of wheat” and implies that this information is equivalent to the genome sequences available for the rice, maize, soybean, and the human genomes.

The AP story and the claims in that story by Neil Hall are in direct conflict with the BBSRC announcement released the same day and are a complete misrepresentation of the value of the work to breeders and scientists. Regrettably, the AP story and its headline that the wheat genome has been sequenced has been repeated in stories by all major media outlets around the world. As correctly stated by the agency that funded the research, the BBSRC, ( http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/media/releases/2010/100827-pr-uk-researchers-draft-wheat-genome.aspx ), “this is an important step but significant work remains to be done to achieve a complete genome sequence” and the “full sequenced genome requires further read-throughs, assembly of the data into chromosomes and significant work to fully annotate the sequence data”.

The IWGSC appreciates the timely release of the 5X sequence coverage of the wheat genome and believes that these raw sequences complement previous EST approaches to collect information about genes and will be a very useful for future high throughput marker development. However, this sequence information cannot be considered as a wheat genome sequence comparable to those produced for other crops in which the sequences are ordered, annotated, and aligned in such a way that the position of the genes along the chromosomes is known. This ordering and alignment is essential for linking the genetic information to the agronomically important traits that the breeders are targeting for improving wheat varieties. The raw sequence reads produced by the UK team could be viewed as similar to having an unordered string of all of the letters from a set of encyclopedia volumes and it is clear that significant additional resources and effort, by far exceeding those invested to achieve the 5X coverage, will be needed over the next few years to obtain a wheat genome sequence.

The IWGSC concurs wholeheartedly with the statement that the complete genome sequence of wheat will usher in a new era of wheat improvement. And, we agree with the press comments that the complete sequence will be a “scientific tour de force” that will be “the most significant breakthrough in wheat production in 10,000 years”. Unfortunately, however, this is far from being the case at present and this premature claim is jeopardizing the ongoing international efforts to truly achieve a genome sequence with high utility for wheat in the next five years. The IWGSC remains committed to continuing our collaborative, international effort and look forward to the day when we can indeed announce that the “wheat genetic code has been cracked”.

The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium

Eduard Akhunov, Kansas State University, USA

Rudi Appels, IWGSC co-chair, Murdoch University, Australia

Olin Anderson; UC Davis, USA

Harindra Singh Balyan, Chaudhary Charan Singh University, India

Faouzi Bekkaoui, National Research Council, Canada

Hélène Berges, CNRGV, France

Hikmet Budak, Sabanci University, Turkey

Luigi Cattivelli, CRA - Genomic Research Centre, Italy

Ravindra Chibbar, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

Frédéric Choulet, INRA, France

Forrest Chumley, Heartland Plant Innovations, USA

Jaroslav Dolezel, Institute of Experimental Botany, Czech Republic

Renato D’Ovidio, University of Tuscia, Italy

Kellye Eversole, executive director, IWGSC, USA

Tzion Fahima, University of Haifa, Israel

Catherine Feuillet, IWGSC co-chair and coordinator of the EU FP7 TriticeaeGenome Project, INRA, France

Delphine Fleury, ACPFG, Australia

Patrizia Galeffi, ENEA, Italy

Bikram Gill, IWGSC co-chair, Kansas State University, USA

Laurent Guerreiro, ARVALIS, France

Pushpendra Gupta, Chaudhary Charan Singh University, India

Hirokazu Handa, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Japan

Pilar Hernandez, Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible, IAS (CSIC), Spain

Beat Keller, IWGSC co-chair, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Benjamin Killian, IPK-Gatersleben, Germany

Nikolay Kolchanov, Institute Cytology & Genetics, Russian Federation

Abraham Korol, University of Haifa, Israel

Evans Laguda, CSIRO, Australia

Peter Langridge, ACPFG, Australia

Philippe Leroy, INRA, France

Hélène Lucas, Genetics and Plant Breeding Department, INRA, France

Sergio Lucretti, ENEA CR Casaccia, Italy

Miloudi Nachit, ICARDA, Syrian Arab Republic

Yasunari Ogihara, IWGSC co-chair, Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University, Japan

Odd-Arne Olsen, Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Hedmark University College, Norway

Hakan Özkan, University Of Cukurova, Turkey

Etienne Paux, INRA, France

Sébastien Praud, Biogemma, France

Cyrille Saintenac, Kansas State University, USA

Elena Salina, Institute Cytology & Genetics, Russian Federation

Takuji Sasaki, Vice president NIAS, Japan

Kuldeep Singh, Punjab Agricultural University, India

Pierre Sourdille, INRA, France

Wolfgang Spielmeyer, CSIRO Plant Industry, Australia

Nils Stein, IPK-Gatersleben, Germany

Mark Sorrels, Cornell University, USA

Song Weining, Northwest A&F University, China

Roberto Tuberosa, Universita de Bologna, Italy

Hu Yingang, Norwest A&F University, China

Institutions:

Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), Australia

Biogemma, France

Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), France

Institute Cytology & Genetics, Russian Federation

Sabanci University, Turkey

University of Haifa, Israel