Wheat Alliance

Status: Active

Wheat growing in a field with a blue sky in the background

Chemical fertilisers have helped increase food production, but their environmental impacts and long-term sustainability are growing concerns. Wheat Alliance addresses this challenge by exploring natural routes to improved crop nutrition through beneficial interactions between wheat and soil microorganisms.

A central focus of Wheat Alliance is to understand how wheat genetics influences the selection and maintenance of a beneficial root microbiome, particularly under nutrient-limited conditions that reflect real world farming constraints. To do this, the project will exploit the exceptional diversity of wheat germplasm available at Niab, including extensive novel genetic diversity introgressed from wheat’s close relatives into the restricted elite bread wheat gene pool.

This includes synthetic hexaploid wheats (SHW) and tetraploid wheat derived populations, generated by crossing wild emmer, emmer, and durum with modern winter and spring bread wheats to boost genetic diversity. Thousands of new wheat lines are available, including diverse multi-founder experimental populations, enabling systematic discovery of genetic factors that shape plant–microbe interactions and nutrient capture.

Using advanced phenotyping and data analytics, the project will link wheat genotype to root microbiome composition and function, and develop predictive approaches to identify the most effective plant–microbe combinations. Together, these outputs aim to support the development of wheat varieties and management strategies that maintain yields while reducing reliance on synthetic fertilisers.