Globally, wheat (Triticum aestivum) is a major food crop for humans with no regional restrictions. However, it is still difficult for Korea to achieve self-sufficiency owing to production limitations. Moreover, food security is unstable owing to the unpredictable climate and unstable international economy. Pre-harvest sprouting (PHS) is among the factors that occurs frequently due to irregular climates, and damages the value of wheat. In this study, RNA-seq was conducted on PHS-treated samples (for Korean representative cultivar ‘keumgang’) and PHS-resistant mutation line ‘Jeonju 377ho’. Gene functional annotation and DEGs analysis were performed using 234,131,980 mapped reads. Associated transcripts were analyzed using Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis and were mainly used to search for genes associated with ATP synthesis and starch and sucrose metabolism related to seed germination and seed dormancy. Candidate DEGs were compressed through cluster set analysis, and gene expression was conducted to search for genes related to seed germination and dormancy to explain them in greater detail based on biological and chemical mechanisms.

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is one of the three major food crops, along with rice and corn, and is the second most consumed crop after rice in Korea. However, the domestic production of wheat is insufficient, and the self-sufficiency rate is recorded in single digits. As wheat has a large genome size of 17 Gbp, and contains many repeated nucleotide sequences, it is difficult to conduct breeding studies and genome-based breeding lags behind that of other crops. To overcome the above challenges, we constructed a wheat core collection using simple sequence repeat markers that are suitable for the domestic cultivation environment with excellent reproducibility. Genetic diversity and population structure were analyzed using a core collection. Agricultural traits were evaluated in the Korean wheat core collection. Single marker analysis was correlated with 21 agricultural traits to identify potential molecular markers. These results may be useful for wheat breeding programs in the precision breeding era.

Wheat transformation was first initiated in 1992, and several studies were conducted to increase its efficiency; however, a very low probability of less than 0.3% was achieved. In 2011, the EU Commission announced a new plant breeding technology that modifies the DNA of seeds and plant cells to develop new varieties with desired characteristics. With the commercialization of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology, a site-directed nuclease technology, the possibility of its application in agriculture has increased with the rapid development of the technology. Recently, genome editing studies have been conducted in wheat, and they have been used for the functional analysis of genes related to various agricultural traits. The wheat full-length genome information was released in the form of a draft sequence in 2018, belatedly in comparison to other crops owing to allohexaploidy and a large genome (17 Gb) size. The recent pre-harvest sprouting resistance wheat breeding material developed in Japan suggests that it is possible to rapidly develop breeding materials through precision breeding technology. Finally, it is necessary to systematically achieve the goal of optimizing agricultural traits of crops through precise breeding technology to increase the breeding accuracy of allohexaploid wheat and rapid genetic fixation using the reduction in generation technology.