About

DELIVERING SUSTAINABLE WHEAT

The Delivering Sustainable Wheat Institute Strategic Programme is a unique, highly collaborative research programme addressing the major challenges faced by the global wheat industry.

Funded by BBSRC, it brings together the complementary expertise of eleven leading UK research institutes and universities.

Our goal is to develop new wheat germplasm that contains the next generation of key traits.

Together, we are committed to developing sustainable solutions to the increased wheat production that will be required in the coming decades.

Work Package 1

Targeted Sustainability-Trait Discovery

Work Package 2

Delivering Resilience to Biotic Stress

Work Package 3

Nutritional Traits

Work Package 4

Sustainable Data Frameworks for Wheat

Our Story

2011-2017: Building on existing funding through BBSRC’s Strategic Longer and Larger grants scheme, the Wheat Institute Strategic Programme (WISP) aimed to create wheat germplasm characterised for key traits and to identify genetic markers to guide breeding programmes. WISP was a comprehensive pre-breeding programme which brought together the John Innes Centre, NIAB, Rothamsted Research, and the universities of Bristol and Nottingham.

2017-2023: The Designing Future Wheat (DFW) Institute Strategic Programme followed on from WISP. It included three new participants in the consortium: the Earlham Institute, Quadram Institute Bioscience, and EMBL-EBI. The programme aimed to improve on the novel wheat germplasm generated through WISP, exploring wheat with increased yield potential, disease resistance, climate tolerance, and improved bread making and nutritional qualities. This germplasm was provided in a readily accessible and referenced form to commercial crop breeders and the plant science community through the Academic and Breeder Toolkits.

2023-2028: The Delivering Sustainable Wheat (DSW) Institute Strategic Programme is our current programme. DSW builds upon the discoveries and developments made during the WISP and DFW programmes, developing a world-leading experimental platform for wheat research to address global challenges in wheat production. It includes the John Innes Centre, Rothamsted Research, Earlham Institute, Quadram Institute Bioscience, the Universities of Bristol, Lancaster, Leeds, Imperial College London, and Nottingham, NIAB, and NISD-UEA.