19 Jan 2017 --- Wheat has always been a major dietary source of calories and protein for humans and the breeding of better bread and pasta wheat varieties is considered key for sustaining global food security. The modern-day cultivated wheat species harbor polyploid genomes, meaning that each plant has multiple functional copies of each gene. Therefore, genetic variation (such as mutations) in one gene copy are frequently masked, or hidden, by functional copies within the other genomes.
