The Durum Wheat Genome

The durum wheat reference genome (cv. Svevo) assembly has become an essential tool to study durum wheat evolution and breeding, as well as for acquiring new knowledge on gene and genome function and organization. The modern durum wheat cultivars and its progenitor, the wild emmer, are separated by about 10,000 years of domestication and subsequent evolution under domestication characterized by a two-step domestication process and one century of knowledge-based plant breeding. The availability of wild emmer accession Zavitan and of the durum wheat cv. Svevo genome sequences allowed for a direct comparison of the two genomes to better understand the changes that occurred during the recent domestication and selection processes. The durum wheat genome has paved the way to a deeper analysis and, eventually, exploitation of tetraploid wheat germplasm diversity for studying the mechanisms of polyploidy evolution, domestication, genetic and epigenetic regulation of homoeologous expression, as well as defining and mapping the wide chart of genetic diversity present in the tetraploid wheat germplasm and assisting breeding strategies for the improvement of wheat as a whole, including durum and bread wheat.