In outcrossing species such as intermediate wheatgrass (IWG, Thinopyrum intermedium), polycrossing is often used to generate novel recombinants through each cycle of selection, but it cannot track pollen-parent pedigrees and it is unknown how self-incompatibility (SI) genes may limit the number of unique crosses obtained. This study investigated the potential of using next-generation sequencing to assign paternity and identify putative SI loci in IWG. Using a reference population of 380 individuals made from controlled crosses...

Perennial grains could simultaneously provide food for humans and a host of ecosystem services, including reduced erosion, minimized nitrate leaching, and increased carbon capture. Yet most of the world’s food and feed is supplied by annual grains. Efforts to domesticate intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrumn intermedium, IWG) as a perennial grain crop have been ongoing since the 1980’s. Currently, there are several breeding programs within North America and Europe working toward developing IWG into a viable crop....

In an era of constrained and depleted natural resources, perennial grains could provide sustainable food production in addition to beneficial ecosystem services like reduced erosion and increased atmospheric carbon capture. One such perennial, intermediate wheatgrass (IWG; Thinopyrum intermedium) has been undergoing continuous breeding for domestication and improvement to develop a perennial grain crop since the 1980’s. However, as a perennial species, IWG has required 2-5 years per selection generation. Therefore, starting in 2017 genomic selection...

The development of perennial grain crops is driven by the vision of simultaneous food production and enhanced ecosystem services. Typically, perennial crops like intermediate wheatgrass (IWG, Thinopyrum intermedium) have low seed yield and other detrimental agronomic traits. Next generation sequencing has made genomic selection (GS) a tractable and viable breeding method. To investigate how an IWG breeding program may utilize GS, we evaluated 3,658 plants over two years for 46 traits to build a training...

An optimized, high-throughput and cost-effective genotyping method applicable to various crop breeding populations is very important in this genomic era. We have developed an optimized Nextera skim-sequencing (skim-seq) approach to genotype different populations that can be used for genetics studies and genomics-assisted breeding. We performed skim-seq on a variety of populations developed through doubled haploid (DH) technology, inter-specific recombinants developed through introgression, amphidiploid developed through wide crosses, and on known monosomic samples. 1. A doubled...