Shifting the limits in wheat research and breeding using a fully annotated reference genome

An annotated reference sequence representing the hexaploid bread wheat genome in 21 pseudomolecules has been analyzed to identify the distribution and genomic 10 context of coding and non-coding elements across the A, B and D sub-genomes. With an estimated coverage of 94% of the genome and containing 107,891 high confidence gene models, this assembly enabled the discovery of tissue and developmental stage related co-expression networks using a transcriptome atlas representing all stages of wheat development. Dynamics of complex gene families involved in environmental adaptation and end-use quality were revealed at 15 sub-genome resolution and contextualized to known agronomic single gene or quantitative trait loci. This community resource establishes the foundation for accelerating wheat research and application through improved understanding of wheat biology and genomics-assisted breeding.