The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) and the Wheat Initiative announce that reference sequencing of wheat chromosome 4B will commence shortly in France.
This complements the reference sequencing projects already underway on 11 other wheat chromosomes and adds momentum to the goal of achieving a high-quality reference sequence of the bread wheat genome to speed up gene discovery and breeding of new wheat varieties.
So far, only the largest of the 21 wheat chromosomes, 3B, has been sequenced to high quality. The reference sequence was published last year in the international journal Science and established the benchmark for sequencing the remaining chromosomes.
More information is available here: http://www.wheatgenome.org/News/Press-releases/New-momentum-for-wheat-genome-project
