Capturing the missing gene content of elite wheat by analysis of wheat landraces

A largest wheat pangenome built from 1,061 diverse individuals finds 10,426 landrace-specific predicted gene models and 176 landrace-specific candidate disease resistance loci.

• Why it matters: Modern wheat breeding has reduced genetic diversity, and comparing to a single reference can miss genes absent from that reference.
• What they did: The study constructed a pangenome from 827 landraces and 234 modern cultivars spanning 47 countries, then called gene presence/absence and validated cultivar calls with independent Iso-Seq from 14 cultivars (96.4% concordance).
• The result: Landraces contain extensive gene content absent from modern cultivars, enabling prioritization of candidate genes and donor accessions tied to ancestry groups for introgression to improve resilience.

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