Can the Middle East’s ancient wheat save the world’s crops from climate change?

Legacy of century-old wheat collection is at heart of research creating future food security

As geneticist Dr Simon Griffiths walks through vast swathes of golden wheat gently blowing in the breeze, one could be forgiven for thinking he was just taking a summer stroll.

But this is no ordinary wheat field. It is the culmination of hundreds of samples collected more than a century ago by a pioneering botanist who recognised the potential for Middle East crops, which are now at the forefront of protecting the world’s food security for generations to come.

At the John Innes Centre (JIC) in Norwich, in the East of England, Dr Griffiths and his team are using ancient samples of wheat from the Middle East to identify varieties that can be resistant to the impacts of climate change, from droughts to flooding, and modern pests and pathogens.

Researchers at the centre determined at least 60 per cent of the genetic diversity found in the historic collection of wheat is absent in modern wheat and can be used to improve it.

Dr Griffiths says it makes the collection a “gold mine of potential” to improve modern wheat.

John Innes scientists are studying new and useful genetic diversity from the AE Watkins collection of wheat. Victoria Pertusa / The National

“This missing 60 per cent is full of beneficial genes that we need to feed people sustainably. Over the last 10,000 years we’ve tended to select for traits which increase yield and improve disease resistance,” he said.

Inspecting his crops, Dr Griffiths showed The National how his team has reproduced historic varieties which no longer exist but are now holding the key to major breakthroughs to combatting new strains of diseases which are wiping out modern wheat.

With these early prototypes, the team have made major breakthroughs in finding crops in the collection that are resistant to diseases wiping out wheat.

“There is an important disease of wheat called yellow rust, it is a fungi that grows on the leaves and if it is not controlled with fungicide chemicals, which you cannot always do, it has devastating effects on the crop with reducing yield significantly,” he said.

Dr Simon Griffiths with the historic seed collection at the John Innes Centre. Victoria Pertusa / The National

“This fungus evolves very quickly to beat the genetics of the wheat. Wheat has resistance genes against it but the fungus changes and evolves and then all of a sudden the wheat that was fine then has the disease. Breeders are always trying to keep up with up with that by finding new resistance genes.”

Presently, farmers in Bangladesh are facing serious issues with a pathogen called Blast which made a species jump to wheat.

Earlier this year, a study by researchers from the Technical University of Munich modelling the impact of Blast found the fungal disease could reduce global wheat production by 13 per cent until 2050 and warned it would be “dramatic” for global food security.

Why wheat?

“Wheat feeds the world and is a huge global staple, so when wheat is threatened with diseases and climate change you are really threatening global food security,” he told The National.

“It is not just about the Watkins collection, it is the fact we have made precise genetic stocks which allow us to map the genes controlling new and important traits in the Watkins material – that alone took us 15 years here in the UK.

“Wheat originated in the Middle East over 10,000 years ago, when farmers just exchanged it between themselves before it later spread around the world.

“We look at landraces, these are types of wheat as it was grown before modern breeding. Now, wheat has been completely displaced in modern varieties and my research is about going back to those old landraces and seeing what is useful in them to help find the original variants which have qualities that show resistance to modern threats. This has only been made possible by the Arthur Watkins collection.”

Arthur Watkins' vision is helping protect modern wheat

It was more than a century ago that British botanist Arthur Ernest Watkins, working at the University of Cambridge, began an arduous mission to contact ex-pats, soldiers and embassy staff across the globe to help him collect samples of wheat.

Recognising how vital the cereal grain was to human survival, Mr Watkins used his wartime contacts to send telegrams across the world urging them to acquire wheat samples from remote regions and markets across the British Empire and send them to him.

Botanist Arthur Watkins sent letters around the world asking people to send samples of wheat to him. Victoria Pertusa / The National

Despite numerous challenges, including receiving incorrect samples, Mr Watkins managed to amass more than 1,000 landraces of bread wheat and many more of pasta wheat from 32 countries during the 1920s and 1930s – it now represents the most comprehensive collection of historic wheat anywhere in the world.

His efforts to maintain and regenerate the collection ensured its viability for future research, and over the past 100 years, this resource has been stored, preserved, and developed and is now stored at the John Innes Centre at -2C temperatures along with all the original letters sent to Mr Watkins.

Arthur Watkins is pictured in the window. Photo: Cambridge University Library

“It is a great story,” Dr Griffiths said as he carefully handled some of the letters and postcards in the archive.

“Watkins sent letters out often via the London Board of Trade and was using the British imperial system, the embassies, consulates and British soldiers and they would go and collect the wheat, often from markets. He would get all the envelopes back and he assembled this collection.”

The collection of seeds is more than a hundred years old. Victoria Pertusa / The National

It was when Mr Watkins moved to the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge that the collection began to be protected and actually used to reproduce the crops.

“Because they were breeders they kept the material alive, which is difficult because you have to keep sowing the seed and harvesting the crop every few years,” Dr Griffiths said.

“Other very prestigious plant collectors at the time treated theirs more like a classical botanical collection, so they would describe it but not keep the wheat seed alive which was a real tragedy but Watkins was in a team of plant breeders who did.”

Studying the DNA and genetics in wheat has been a game-changer

The missing piece in the jigsaw was the DNA sequencing and the collection’s move to the JIC, a genetics centre, which has been a game-changer.

Over a 15 year period, scientists at the JIC have studied the genes of the collection and over the past five years have worked with Professor Cheng Shifeng at the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen to map the DNA of the samples.

“We could not really use the Watkins collection properly because of genomics,” Dr Griffiths said.

“Wheat is a real headache because it is a huge genomic with 18giga bases of sequence. So it was not until recently that we could find collaborators who could sequence the whole of the Watkins collection because altogether we had to sequence 1,200 types of wheat. It has been a serious investment of time, labour and innovation.”

Dr Simon Griffiths who conducts research on wheat seeds from the Middle East at the John Innes Centre to protect future crops. Photo: Dr Simon Griffiths

But their effort has paid off and could now open previously unlocked doors to help tackle threats to wheat.

Key traits already found in this untapped diversity include nitrogen use efficiency, slug resistance and resilience to pests and diseases.

“There are genes which will enable plant breeders to increase the efficiency of nitrogen use in wheat, if we can get these into modern varieties that farmers can grow, they will need to apply less fertiliser, saving money and reducing emissions,” he said.

Historic wheat is resistant to new diseases

“There was an event in western Europe where all of a sudden the fungus evolved much more quickly and that gave many more fungal variants which were rapidly overcoming the wheat’s resistance. So we looked at the landraces in the Watkins collections for things which were resistant to these strains.

“We found there were 33 and all of those came from Iran or geographical regions around Iran so those early breeders in Europe never used those Iranian landraces but they are now an incredibly important resource for delivering disease resistance to modern wheat.”

It was only in the Watkins collection that a gene was discovered that gives resistance too it.

John Innes scientists are studying new and useful genetic diversity from the AE Watkins collection of bread wheat landraces. Victoria Pertusa / The National

Wheat is grown in outdoor labs

The seeds in the Watkins collection are reproduced to grow crops across the country in different environments in fields divided into small plots for each individual sample. Specially created mini combine harvesters then harvest it for the scientists to study.

“It is not a classic lab with us sat at a bench with a white coat on. We are in the field, all the important data is collected from the plants growing in the field,” he said.

“We have been astounded at how much the genetic variation which is useful has been found in the landraces and we want to make sure that future varieties take full advantage of these beneficial traits which are locked up in our collection.”

Their results and discoveries are then shared with commercial breeders and global institutions to help create the next generation of resistant wheat.

Holding one of the sheaves in his hand, Dr Griffiths said: “We could not have achieved this as one institution. It is not just about the Watkins collection, it is the fact we have made precise genetic stocks which allow us to map the genes controlling new and important traits in the Watkins material.

“The missing piece in the jigsaw was the DNA sequencing.

“If there is one message, it is that this material is here to use. It is fully available to anyone who requests it so they can use it in their own countries to develop better wheat varieties. This is a gold mine for the future.”