The National Plant Phenomics Centre at IBERS Aberystwyth has produced this CT scanning animated image to view NIAB’s MAGIC CARPeT wheat ears, a BBSRC BGR funded project.
This is Holdfast, one of the 16 parents of the MAGIC Diverse population. The imaging allows grains to be visualised and measured in situ within the ear.
Multi-parent Advanced Generation Inter-Crossing (MAGIC) populations are tools for dissecting complex traits in wheat. The advantage of MAGIC is that using multiple parents ensures a wide genetic diversity is captured in the population. Several rounds of inter-crossing result in a high level of recombination and low linkage disequilibrium.
NIAB, funded by BBSRC, AHDB and commercial partners, has been at the forefront of developing two wheat magic populations – MAGIC Elite (8 parents) and MAGIC Diverse (16 parents).
The MAGIC Diverse population's 16 parents represent a range of UK varieties grown since the 1930s. As part of the BBSRC funded project ‘MAGIC CARPeT’ (MAGIC Community Access to Resources Protocols and Training), the population is being developed into an invaluable research resource for the wheat research and breeding communities.