Abstract:
Genetic diversity for many agriculturally important traits has been eroded in bread wheat through polyploidisation, domestication and breeding. The wild relatives of domesticated wheat act as a valuable reservoir of lost diversity. We have developed sequenced panels of wild wheats and wheat landraces to study domestication history and facilitate the identification and exploitation of useful genetic variation. Our focus is on resistance to major diseases of wheat including the rusts, Septoria and wheat blast. Our work has led to the development of fast, new and efficient methods for gene discovery and cloning which can be applied to a range of crop plants [1-3]. We also co-developed a method for halving the generation time of wheat and other crops, in a controlled environment, dramatically speeding up capabilities for research and breeding [4]. Our long term aim is to use cloned genes to engineer wheat with immunity to its major diseases [5].
 
1. Steuernagel et al (2016). Rapid cloning of disease-resistance genes in plants using mutagenesis and sequence capture. Nature Biotechnology 34:652-5.
2. Sánchez-Martín et al (2016). Rapid gene isolation in barley and wheat by mutant chromosome sequencing. Genome Biology 17(1):221.
3. Arora et al (2019) Resistance gene cloning from a wild crop relative by sequence capture and association genetics. Nature Biotechnology 37:139-143.
4. Watson et al (2018). Speed breeding is a powerful tool to accelerate crop research and breeding. Nature Plants 4:23-29.
5. Dhugga and Wulff (2018) Wheat, the cereal abandoned by GM. Science 361:451-452.

Bio:
Brande is a molecular plant pathologist and geneticist. He uses next generation sequencing on structured populations to identify genes restricting the causal agents of major fungal diseases of wheat. His long-term aim is to use cloned genes from wild ancestors of wheat to engineer durable resistance to these diseases in cultivated wheat. Brande works in the John Innes Centre, UK, a centre for research and training in plant and microbial sciences. Prior to joining JIC, Brande worked as Research Manager of The Sainsbury Laboratory 2Blades Group (2010-2014), and as a postdoctoral fellow in the IBMCP-Valencia and IBMP-Strasbourg (with fellowships from EMBO and HFSP). He received his PhD from The Sainsbury Laboratory in 2002.
http://www.jic.ac.uk/scientists/brande-wulff/