Future crop improvement in the small grain cereals barley and wheat – which together represent by far the most important crop species for Germany – will demand a complete as possible access to their genome sequence. This is a prerequisite for establishing new breeding concepts, i.e. genomics assisted breeding, genomic selection or smart breeding which embark on the utilization of massively-parallel genotyping and “omics”-technologies. In a scenario of climate change and limited resources, such innovation will become imperative for future yield and quality improvement, or even to maintain yield stability and sustainability of agriculture. The international barley genome sequencing consortium (IBSC, http://barleygenome.org) is currently working on the map-based sequencing of the barley genome. In frame of three BMBF-, Leibniz- und DFG-funded projects (GABI-FUTURE BARLEX, ERA-PG BARCODE, Leibniz Pakt – Physikalische Kartierung des Gerstegenoms) members of the TRITEX consortium have contributed major work to the physical and genetic mapping as well as first draft sequencing of the barley genome. In frame of the project TRITEX we aim to advance the current version of barley genomic resources into a draft sequence of the barley gene space fully integrated into a physical map backbone. The project will furthermore contribute to the international efforts of unlocking the allo-hexaploid bread wheat genome by establishing a physical map of wheat chromosome 6A supported by the available genome information of the homologous region of the barley genome. Important results will be made accessible to the associated project partners from the private breeding industries. A start-up service provider in the area of marker analysis and association genetics will directly utilize project results for product development. Specifically we aim to:

•    improve the physical map of barley into a phase II draft version of the barley genome in accordance to IBSC goals (International Barley Sequencing Consortium, http://barleygenome.org);

•    anchor all barley genes by high-throughput (HT) sequencing into the physical / genetic context of the barley genome providing a template for genome-scale sequencing and trait isolation;

•    accumulate genome-wide diversity information by resequencing diverse barley germplasm;

•    construct a physical map of wheat chromosome 6A and build a linear gene order model of this chromosome for trait isolation and as contribution to efforts of IWGSC (International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium http://www.wheatgenome.org);

•    utilize SNP data for developing an economical and flexible HT SNP platform;

•   deliver new software solutions for association genetics in breeding

Results of the TRITEX project played a leading role and were combined with results of preceding (see above) and parallely ongoing international projects in a recent Nature publication on the physically and genetically integrated draft sequence of the barley gene space (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7426/full/nature11543.html).