Eggplant wild relative.

The crop wild relative project is of course not just about collecting, but also includes activities to prepare the CWR material for use in breeding programs. By the end of 2013, we consulted with breeders and other experts on the strategies for using CWR in the improvement of the following crops: potato, sorghum, beans, sunflower, wheat, rice, barley, eggplant, sweet potato, alfalfa, lentil, banana, cowpea, pea, apple, and carrot. These consultations are now guiding the development of projects on CWR pre-breeding and evaluation. This will be a diverse set of projects, some of which focusing more on germplasm development, whereas others have a stronger focus on the evaluation of CWR or already developed pre-bred line for traits of interest in the context of climate change adaptation.

Two pilot pre-breeding projects started already back in 2012 on rice and sunflowers and four further projects on potato, lentil, eggplant and carrot were initiated since then. All prebreeding projects contain a substantial capacity building component and are partnerships between institutions in developing countries as well as developed countries and/or CGIAR institutes:

Eggplant: Horticulture Crop Research and Development Institute (HCRDI, Sri Lanka) Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV, Spain) and Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny (UFH, Cote d’Ivoire)

Carrot: Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU, Bangladesh), University of Sargodha (UOS, Pakistan) and USDA Vegetable Crops Research Unit (USA)

Lentil: Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (Bangladesh), Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR, Ethiopia), Harran University (Turkey), Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (CSIC, Spain), International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA, Morocco), Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC, Nepal), University of Leon (Spain) and University of Saskatchewan (Canada)

Potato: Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (EMBRAPA, Brazil), International Potato Center (CIP, Peru) and Uruguayan Agricultural Research Institute (INIA, Uruguay)

Rice: Cornell University (USA) and International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, The Philippines)

Sunflower: University of British Columbia (UBC, Canada) and National Agricultural Research Organization of Uganda (NARO, Uganda)

We are excited about the progress to date of all five of these projects and we will share the results and outcomes through the project website, as soon as they become available.

Story written by: Hannes Dempewolf