Crop diversity underlies the productivity and adaptive capacity of agriculture. In hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L. 2n = 6x = 42, AABBDD), most genetic diversity is held within landraces that were traditionally farmed across Northern Africa, Europe, and Asia for thousands of years prior to their displacement by modern agriculture. Yet, today’s high-yielding varieties contain only a small fraction of this available gene pool, raising concerns that genetic erosion within modern stocks could limit future gains in bread wheat production. This proposal addresses a critical need to preserve, discover, and mobilize these genetic resources by sequencing 8 landrace genomes that are foundational to early regional growing centers and which encompass the worldwide diversity of bread wheat. In addition, this project will update the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium Chinese Spring reference sequence (IWGSC CS RefSeq), which serves as the primary genome reference for bread wheat research.