Rome, Italy
May 22, 2009

Source: Global Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building (GIPB)

The awards (see Table) support a range of innovative projects across crops and continents, and seek a variety of important plant traits. The call for proposals went out late in 2008 as a coordinated effort among GIPB, the Global Crop Diversity Trust (the Trust), and the Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Each of these organizations places high priority on genetic solutions to adaptation to the effects of climate change. GIPB is supporting efforts by plant breeders to use such information to breed new, high-yielding varieties adapted to conditions on the ground. The GCP is offering funding for scientists to use molecular mapping technology to identify the “DNA fingerprint” of the desired trait once crops have been identified. The Trust, in partnership with the UN Foundation and with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is supporting the GIPB-funded projects.

Project title	Grant recipient	Country
Morpho-physiological characterization of Burkina Faso rice collection for drought and iron toxicity tolerance	Institut National de l’Environnement et de la Recherche Agronomique (INERA)	Burkina Faso
Improvement of rice varieties/breeding lines for low water availability in South and Southeast Asia	School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan	Malaysia
Broadening the genetic base of potato for the tropics, in preparation for climate change	International Potato Center (CIP)	Peru
Recurrent and genome-wide selection for enhancing yield in rice	Philippine Rice Research Institute	The Philippines
Evaluation of activation of endogenous banana streak virus sequences in Musa germplasm from Southeast Asia and the Pacific	Institute of Plant Breeding – Crop Science Cluster, College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines Los Baños	The Philippines
Improvement  of African maize germplasm by introgressing temperate genes to enhance nutritional quality and adaptability to climate change	African Centre for Crop Improvement, University of Kwazulu-Natal	Republic of South Africa

“We want to support scientists to probe crop genebanks for natural traits that will allow farm production to stay one step ahead of climate change,” said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Trust. “The data are now clear that rising temperatures, radically altered precipitation patterns and new infestations of plant pests are on the near horizon, and we need to look to our crop genebanks for the traits that will help us avoid a crisis.” (Details on the web page of Generation).

By the end of this century, scientists now predict that temperatures during growing seasons in the tropics and subtropics are destined to be even hotter than what are now considered extreme temperatures.  New data also show steadily drier conditions in many regions. But there is widespread concern, particularly in the developing world, that plant breeding efforts are not moving fast enough to develop new varieties that can withstand these stresses and enable farmers to avoid steep drops in food production.

“It’s not enough to just identify the trait,” said Humberto Gómez, the Coordinator of GCP’s Genotyping Support Service. “To produce a viable crop variety, one has to go further and also conduct molecular analysis and then the breeding. This work can take up to ten years from the point of discovering the trait to having a new crop actually growing in a farmer’s field. We’re seeking to speed up that process by supporting breeders in the developing world.”

“Together, these efforts will increase our ability to be ready for climate change,” said Elcio Guimaraes of GIPB.  “It will be much easier for young plant breeders to identify and use promising traits that arm crops against climate change.”

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Website: http://km.fao.org/gipb/

Published: May 22, 2009