Introduction to prebreeding component of CWR project

Adapting agriculture to climate
change: collecting, protecting and
preparing crop wild relatives

Hannes Dempewolf
- The Global Crop Diversity Trust -

http://croptrust.org

What is the Global Crop Diversity Trust?

• Public-private partnership raising an endowment fund
that will provide continuous funding for key crop
diversity collections (starting with international
collections maintained by CGIAR Centres)
• Goal: “to advance an efficient and sustainable global
system of ex situ conservation by promoting the
rescue, understanding, use and long-term
conservation of valuable plant genetic resources”
• Part of the funding strategy of the International Treaty
for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
(ITPGRFA)

Genesys

http://www.genesys-pgr.org/

A global initiative on crop wild relatives

• Identify, collect, conserve, document and use key
crop wild relative diversity for climate change
adaptation (in developing countries)
• 10 year funding pledged by Norwegian government,
starting 2011
• 26 target crops: alfalfa, apple, bambara groundnut,
banana, barley, bean, carrot, chickpea, cowpea,
eggplant, faba bean, finger millet, grasspea, lentil,
oat, pea, pearl millet, pigeon pea, potato, rice, rye,
sorghum, sunflower, sweet potato, vetch and wheat

Targeting “missing” diversity:
potato CWRs

http://gisweb.ciat.cgiar.org/GapAnalysis/

Targeting threatened diversity: Phaseolus

Targeting threatened diversity: 12
genepools

Not just conservation

• Significant component of USE of collected and conserved
material
• Genotyping
• Phenotyping
• Pre-breeding
• Evaluation

Pre-breeding

“It's a bit like crossing a house cat with a wildcat. You don't
automatically get a big docile pussycat. What you get is a lot of
wildness that you probably don't want Iying on your sofa.”

Possible CWR pre-breeding
and evaluation strategies

• Assess genetic diversity of accessions, pick set of diverse CWR
genotypes and cross with cultivars, create BCs and RILs and
evaluate
• First evaluate CWRs, then pick most promising genotypes and
use in pre-breeding with cultivated lines, evaluate again
• QTL (and MAS) approaches
• Candidate gene approach
• Sequence-based transcriptomics (to identify expression
differences under stress)

…. ?

Survey of pre-breeding experts

1. Which wild species or population(s) of crop wild relatives do
you think should be targeted first and foremost?

2. Which wild species or population(s) do you feel are currently
under-represented in ex situ collections and should be targeted
during the collecting activities of this project?

3. Which traits would you target (especially with reference to
traits that are important in a climate change context)?

 So far a total of 98 expert responses were collected

Some issues to consider…

• Focus on species that are easiest to use or more difficult to use
and less well known but perhaps more interesting?
• What kinds of outputs of the project would be maximally useful
to the breeding community?
• What can be done to make breeders around the world aware of
the newly collected germplasm?

Expected Outputs of the meeting:

A. Where we are: Synthesis of past experiences and challenges of
the use of CWRs in potato pre-breeding

Expected Outputs of the meeting:

B. Where we should be going: Synthesis of expert opinions on the
best ‘way forward’ with regards to the use of CWRs in potato
pre-breeding:
• Which traits should pre-breeding efforts focus on in the context of
climate change?
• Which CWR taxa are promising but have so far largely remained
unexploited?
• Where do such taxa occur and what should priorities be for future
collecting?
• What are the main obstacles for an increased use of CWR in
potato pre-breeding (e.g. taxonomical issues; access regimes to
PGR; funding constraints; etc.) and how can we overcome them?

Program overview

DAY 1:
• Welcome and introduction
• Setting the scene: Species diversity of potato CWRs and historical
perspectives on the use of CWRs in potato pre-breeding
• Participants report on experiences, accomplishments, challenges
and perspectives with the use of CWRs in potato pre-breeding

DAY 2:
• Potato breeding objectives and climate change
• Predictability of systematic relationships and biogeography for the
use of CWRs in pre-breeding
• Synthesis work towards meeting outcomes

Program overview

DAY 3:
• Relevant international and national policies and regulations with
regards to potato CWRs
• Discussion on:
• relevant policies and the role of the public and private
sector;
• priorities for collecting potato CWRs;
• syntheses and the way forward

Solanum megistacrolobum (credits: Arthur Chapman)

Thank you for coming
and
thank you to CIP for hosting us!

Introduction to prebreeding component of CWR project

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Introduction to prebreeding component of CWR project

Editor's Notes