Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, April 13 (Reporter Wei Mengjia) Modern ordinary wheat is a hexaploid crop formed by hybridization of three ancestral species. As an ancient food crop and the "granary pillar" of human beings, the improvement of yield and quality of wheat crops has always been the focus of scientists.

　　Peking University Modern Agriculture Research Institute, Weifang Modern Agriculture Shandong Provincial Laboratory, and Wheat Breeding National Key Laboratory recently published an important result in the international academic journal Nature Genetics, that is, for the first time in the world, it was successfully drawn up a complete genome map of telomeres to telomeres (T2T) in hexaploid wheat, achieving an accurate "puzzle" with no gaps in the wheat genome from "head" to "tail".

　　Experts believe that this achievement is a new breakthrough in China's agricultural genomics research, which means that wheat genomic research has entered a new stage and provides important scientific and technological support for high wheat yields and food security.

　　On April 13, 2025, Deng Xingwang (middle), president and chief scientist of Peking University's Modern Agriculture Research Institute, and members of the team observed wheat in the Plant Growth Room of Peking University's Modern Agriculture Research Institute. Xinhua News Agency
　　The wheat genome can be called "Mount Everest of the Plant World". It is not only huge, but its total genetic code is nearly 40 times that of rice and nearly 5 times that of humans. In addition, the genome is 80% repeated sequences - this is like copying a long article thousands of times before collaging it, making it impossible to get a glimpse of its full picture, hindering the in-depth application of wheat research and breeding.

　　He Hang, a researcher at the Institute of Modern Agriculture at Peking University, said that through cutting-edge technologies such as high-precision sequencing and combining multiple algorithms, the team successfully constructed a hexapploid wheat T2T genome with about 14.5 billion bases. "Telomeres are repeated DNA sequences present at the end of eukaryotic chromosomes, and we have achieved for the first time a gapless splicing of 21 pairs of wheat chromosomes from telomeres to telomeres."

　　"The genome is like a long line with multiple chromosomes. In the past, there were many missing parts of the wheat genome. This is the first time in the world that we have completely connected the entire long line, assembled it from the head to the tail without any gap to form a complete wheat genome map." Deng Xingwang, dean of the Institute of Modern Agriculture at Peking University and chief scientist, said, "This laid the foundation for future molecular design breeding."

　　Microscopy of wheat chromosomes taken by the research team (data photo). Xinhua News Agency
　　Having a complete wheat genome map is like having a detailed map that can clearly analyze some complex regions in the genome. "It's like finding the small keys to rooms in the wheat genome, providing new clues for studying the evolutionary process of these complex regions," said He Hang.

　　Using this high-quality genomic map, the research team also annotated more than 140,000 high-confidence protein-encoded genes, including many newly discovered disease-resistant genes, which provides a new direction for disease-resistant breeding in wheat.

　　Deng Xingwang said that this complete wheat genome map has significant advantages in integrity, continuity and accuracy, not only deepening people's understanding of the structure and evolutionary mechanism of wheat genome, but also providing an example for analyzing other complex polyploid crop genomes. Relying on this map, scientists will be able to more accurately explore key genes related to yield, quality, and disease resistance in the future, bringing breakthroughs to the improvement of wheat varieties.

[Editor in charge: Chen Tingyu]