The genetic and genomic research of wheat has lagged behind similar research regarding other important crops, such as rice and maize29. Conservation of gene identity and collinearity among gramineous plants will depend on the rates of genome/gene evolution and rearrangement in the investigated species22. There is a high level of genome-synteny among gramineous plants, especially wheat, Brachypodium and rice, with wheat being more closely related to Brachypodium than to rice22, 23, 30–32. Wheat improvement programs can benefit from the use of comparative genetics to transfer information about genes from model species to wheat, to help identify genes controlling traits of interest, and to assess within-species allelic diversity so that the best alleles can be identified and assembled in superior varieties.