The history of EWAC - The European Cereal Genetics Co-operative (Part III)
Since the formation of EWAC in 1967, 13 meetings have been held (Table 2) all of which have proved useful venues for the exchange of scientific ideas and for the fostering of new collaborative projects. Information has also been exchanged in the EWAC Newsletter that now tends to report the proceedings of EWAC meeting with additional articles contributed by members unable to attend meetings.
At the 10th EWAC meeting, Viterbo, Italy 1997 a new collaborative project was proposed by Boerner, Korzun and Worland (1997) on "The detection and mapping of agronomically important genes in wheat". This project to take EWAC into the 21st Century aimed to verify the correctness of three divergent EWAC substitution series and to use them as a basis for detecting and tagging genes of agronomic importance. The three chosen sets of intervarietal substitution lines were: ´Cappelle Desprez/Besostaya´(Cap/Bes),´Chinese Spring/Synthetics´(CS/Syn) and ´Saratovskaya29/Janetskis Probat´(S29/JP).
Since the formation of EWAC leadership had been informal led by Prof. Colin Law and later by Tony Worland and colleagues at the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge and later at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, England. At the 11th EWAC Meeting that was held in Novosibirsk, Russia, an International Committee was elected to secure the future of EWAC. Andreas Boerner, Tatyana Pshenichnikova agreed to join Tony Worland on the Committee. It was stated by Andreas Boerner during the business meeting that the original aim of EWAC to establish aneuploid series in a range of cultivars from across Europe had indeed been realized, and efforts should be pooled in detection and mapping of genes controlling the agronomical important characters using current marker technologies. The intervarietal substitution stocks, ´Cappelle Desprez/Besostaya´(Cap/Bes), ´Chinese Spring/Synthetic´(CS/Syn) and ´Saratovskaya29/Janetskis Probat´(S29/JP) proposed at the previous meeting should be the ongoing focus of the co-operative investigation.
The 12th EWAC Meeting, Norwich, UK, was organized by the expanded International
Committee (Andreas Boerner, John Snape, Viktor Korzun and Tatyana Pshenichnikova)
especially to commemorate the life and work of Tony Worland, EWAC secretary
for many years and one of its most active members, who passed away on
April 24, 2001. A huge amount of presented work showed the extreme utility
of the obtained precise genetic stocks in genetic and molecular analysis
of wheat genome. It was emphasized that the focus should be put on the
maintenance and validation (Salina et al. 2003) of the stocks developed
in the past, rather than to develop new stocks. Four steps for further
exploitation of the intervarietal substitution lines were suggested
by Andreas Boerner:
&rsaquo Multiplication of the stocks
&rsaquo Verification of the substitution lines
&rsaquo Development of single chromosome recombinant lines
&rsaquo Phenotypic evaluation
At the 13th EWAC Meeting, Prague Czech Republic, the mandate of EWAC was re-considered as, in fact, the work of the co-operative was not restricted to wheat aneuploid research only. Stocks were developed and used for genetic studies including the localization and mapping of genes/QTLs by employing molecular markers. Also, due to the synteny within the Triticeae other cereals became of interest for wheat researchers. It was proposed to extend the mandate of EWAC to co-ordinate genetic studies in cereals with the main focus on the development of new and the exploitation of existing genetic stocks. In the future EWAC will be kept as a label but the following extended name will be used:´EWAC - the European Cereals Genetics Co-operative´.
In the discussion on the development and maintenance of genetic stocks and their utilization for co-operative projects Andreas Boerner presented in total 24 sets of single chromosome recombinant DH lines at different steps of development, and a set of 85 ´Chinese Spring/Synthetics´ D genome introgression lines (Pestsova et al. 2006), obtained at IPK Gatersleben. Other mainly new material was offered by John Snape, JIC Norwich (DH lines of the reference mapping population ´Avalon x Cadensa´, TILLING population), Antonio Blanco, University of Bari (DH lines and RILs of Durum mapping populations) or Tatyana Pshenichnikova , ICG Novosibirsk (aneuploid sets of ´Saratovskaya 29´and ´Diamant 2´). Among the participants of EWAC there is no doubt about the necessity to apply for additional funding, and set up a useful linkage between EWAC and international cereal research platforms like CIMMYT in the context of ´Generation Challenge Programme´. During the 40 years since its formation EWAC has achieved a great deal in developing precise genetic stocks, training scientists and bringing together European and International scientists for discussions and collaborative experimentation.