On Thursday, an international team of scientists disclosed the genetic blueprint of wheat in an attempt to direct the development of varieties of this vitally important food crop.

This research was published in the journal Science. And the researchers involved in it were a part of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, formed in 2005 by a group of wheat growers, plant scientists and breeders.

They have formulated chromosome-based draft genome sequence of bread wheat which is called common wheat or Triticum aestivum. This helps them to identify genes controlling agriculturally important traits like yield, disease and pest resistance and drought tolerance. For this they had encompassed nearly all the 124,000 genes of bread wheat and roughly 60 percent of the whole genome.

"Bread wheat is a major crop. It is the most widely grown crop around the world and is a staple food for one third of the human population. However, its genome is so complex that it has always been perceived as impossible to sequence", said FrDedDericChoulet, a plant genomicist at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) and also one of the lead researchers of this research.

This new research also considers a broad look at the largest of wheat's 21 chromosomes. All this is done keeping in mind that new and better wheat varieties need to be developed. With an enormous boost in the human population, food production needs to be increased by over 50 percent.