The sequencing project will cover representative regions of the wheat genome with the goal of comparing diploid Triticum species (T. monococcum and T. tauschii), a tetraploid species (T. durum), and the hexaploid (T. aestivum). The project will utilize French BAC library resources for hexaploid wheat (Renan and Chinese Spring) and chromosome-specific BAC libraries (URGV), as well as BAC resources from diploid and tetraploid species furnished by the University of California at Davis and the CSIRO. These BAC resources contain a total of over 3 million clones. They have been organized in a way to facilitate their exploitation and identify the clones of interest, either by PCR on pools of BAC clones, or by hybridization on 6 x 6 high density filters (42,600 clones in duplicate per 22 cm x 22 cm filter).

Genoscope will undertake the comparative sequencing of regions harboring genes and sequences of interest which have played a key role in the domestication of wheat and thus contributed to the founding of the first human civilizations.
About 100 BAC clones of average size 130 kb will be necessary for this project (6 BAC clones per region), which constitutes a sequencing volume of about 20,000 reads.
Genoscope will carry out the finishing step for these sequences.