DU South Campus part of invaluable research about wheat genome

Delhi University (DU) South Campus, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) Ludhiana, and National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology in New Delhi are three leading research Institutes of India that are part of an International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) which is working to decode the gene sequence of bread wheat.

The consortium has finally published its first draft sequence of bread wheat genome, which could be an invaluable resource to plant science researchers and breeders. This genetic blueprint will not help scientists to improve productivity of crops and make it more immune to infections and climatic changes.

The three Indian research institutes which are being funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) had to decode Chromosome 2A, which has about 900 million bases and is about one-third the size of the human genome and 2.5 times the size of the rice genome.

The consortium includes 15 countries in all. Dr Kuldeep Singh, project coordinator in India, shared that it will take a few more years to take study from lab to the fields. Dr Swapan Datta from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research  said that the research will facilitated in helping us understand the gene function.