Wheat and maize production face major global challenges due to increasing food and non-food demand, calls for reducing their environmental footprint and growing uncertainties due to climate change. BREEDWHEAT and AMAIZING aim at improving the competitiveness of French agriculture by creating new bread wheat and maize varieties for sustainable production, using advanced knowledge and technology in plant genomics, physiology, genetics and biotechnology.
BREEDWHEAT aims at developing efficient genome sequence-based tools and new methodologies for breeding wheat varieties with improved quality, sustainability, and productivity. Strong emphasis is put on the utilization of high throughput phenotyping and genotyping capabilities and on the exploitation of genetic resources to identify and combine new alleles for traits underlying yield, quality and tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses into improved varieties. BREEDWHEAT is complementary to other current international initiatives and, in particular, the “WHEAT-Global Alliance for Improving Food Security and the Livelihoods of the Resource-poor in the Developing World” led by CIMMYT and ICARDA. BREEDWHEAT involves 26 partners, including 11 private companies, in France and in Europe. The total budget of BREEDWHEAT is €39 million for 9 years, with €9 million granted by the French National Research Agency.
AMAIZING focuses on establishing tools and methods and on producing plant material based upon association mapping and ecophysiological studies of maize under abiotic stresses. AMAIZING brings together the key players of the maize industry in France that will share the results of pilot experiments and transfer them to their ongoing breeding and evaluation programmes. AMAIZING will also contribute to international efforts to characterize maize genome variations, and to the use of European genetic diversity. AMAIZING will be carried out in collaboration with other international initiatives and, in particular, the SEEDS initiative coordinated by the CIMMYT and the German SynBreed BMBF-funded initiative. AMAIZING involves 24 partners, including 7 breeding companies and 2 biotech companies. The total budget of AMAIZING is €30 million for 8 years, with €9 million granted by the French National Research Agency.
*Catherine Feuillet (INRA Joint Research Unit on Genetics, Diversity and Ecophysiology of Cereals, Clermont-Ferrand)
** Alain Charcosset (INRA Joint Research Unit on Plant Genetics, Le Moulon).
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BREEDWHEAT
Recent scientific and technological advances offer unique opportunities to accelerate genetic gain and create new high-yielding varieties for sustainable agriculture.
Studies performed in BREEDWHEAT will combine genetic, genomic and ecophysiology analyses with high throughput phenotyping and genotyping to perform association studies and identify markers and candidate genes for yield and quality traits under abiotic and biotic stress; innovative tools, methods, and plant material will be developed. BREEDWHEAT will also contribute to the international efforts to obtain a high-quality reference sequence of the bread wheat genome.
AMAIZING
During the past 10 years, yield increase through genetic gain has been slowing, suggesting that the existing breeding methods are not going to deliver varieties that will meet the forecasted needs as for example in terms of environmental footprints.
The key point of AMAIZING is the creation of tools, methods and plant material based upon association mapping and ecophysiological studies of yield under abiotic stresses. Drought tolerance and water use efficiency, cold tolerance, and nitrogen use efficiency are the major targets for a better utilization of resources and for improved sustainability. Systematic characterization of genetic diversity and high throughput phenotyping will bring the changes in paradigms that are necessary to reach higher yields under abiotic constraints.
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