Breeding Cultivars for Heat Stress Tolerance in Staple Food Crops

Food and nutritional security will be worsened by climate change-induced high temperatures, droughts and reduced water availability in most agricultural food crops environments, particularly in developing countries. Recent evidences indicate that countries in the southern hemisphere are more vulnerable to food production due to greater frequency of extreme weather events. These challenges can be addressed by: (i) adoption of climate mitigation tools in agricultural and urban activities; (ii) development of heat and drought tolerant cultivars in major food crops; (iii) bringing back forgotten native minor food crops such as millets and root crops; and (iv) continued investment in agricultural research and development with the strong government policy support on native crops grown by small holder farmers. The native crops have inherent potential and traits to cope with adverse climate during the course of its evolution process. Therefore, diversifying the crops should be a prime framework of the climate-smart agriculture to meet the global food and nutritional security for which policy-driven production changes are highly required in developing countries. The adverse effects of climate change on agricultural production need to be addressed by multidisciplinary team and approaches through strong network of research consortium including private sectors and multinational governments for global impact

Genetic trends in CIMMYT’s tropical maize breeding pipelines

Fostering a culture of continuous improvement through regular monitoring of genetic trends in breeding pipelines is essential to improve efficiency and increase accountability. This is the first global study to estimate genetic trends across the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) tropical maize breeding pipelines in eastern and southern Africa (ESA), South Asia, and Latin America over the past decade. Data from a total of 4152 advanced breeding trials and 34,813 entries, conducted at 1331 locations in 28 countries globally, were used for this study. Genetic trends for grain yield reached up to 138 kg ha−1 yr−1 in ESA, 118 kg ha−1 yr−1 South Asia and 143 kg ha−1 yr−1 in Latin America. Genetic trend was, in part, related to the extent of deployment of new breeding tools in each pipeline, strength of an extensive phenotyping network, and funding stability. Over the past decade, CIMMYT’s breeding pipelines have significantly evolved, incorporating new tools/technologies to increase selection accuracy and intensity, while reducing cycle time. The first pipeline, Eastern Africa Product Profile 1a (EA-PP1a), to implement marker-assisted forward-breeding for resistance to key diseases, coupled with rapid-cycle genomic selection for drought, recorded a genetic trend of 2.46% per year highlighting the potential for deploying new tools/technologies to increase genetic gain

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Not AvailableThe nutritional quality and food use of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is mainly governed by oil, fatty acids, protein, and moisture content of kernels. The breeding for higher proportion of oil, protein, and oleic acid in the kernels is an important objective, which needs a non-destructive, rapid, and reliable method for routine estimation in relatively large breeding populations. The present study reports the development of calibration equations in near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) for rapid and non-destructive estimation of kernel quality. Mode of inheritance pattern of a high oleic trait in groundnut was also studied. The best equation for each trait was selected based on the coefficient of determination in calibration and for cross-validation. The current equation gave high fidelity with the reference to biochemical value as indicated by high values of coefficient of determination in external validation (r2 ) for oleic acid (r2 = 0.96), linoleic acid (r 2 = 0.96), moisture (r 2 = 0.96) and moderate for oil (r 2 = 0.89), protein (r 2 = 0.83) and palmitic acid (r 2 = 0.80). The study further developed an efficient NIRS equation to deploy in groundnut breeding. The high oleic trait inheritance pattern was studied in F2:3 population derived from a cross between Spanish bunch normal oleic ICGV 06420 and high oleic SunOleic 95R parents. The results showed duplicate recessive inheritance pattern with a segregation ratio of 15: 1 (normal oleic: high oleic). The outcomes from the inheritance study helps to breed groundnut cultivars for high oleic trait.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableFostering a culture of continuous improvement through regular monitoring of genetic trends in breeding pipelines is essential to improve efficiency and increase accountability. This is the first global study to estimate genetic trends across the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) tropical maize breeding pipelines in eastern and southern Africa (ESA), South Asia, and Latin America over the past decade. Data from a total of 4152 advanced breeding trials and 34,813 entries, conducted at 1331 locations in 28 countries globally, were used for this study. Genetic trends for grain yield reached up to 138 kg ha− 1 yr− 1 in ESA, 118 kg ha− 1 yr− 1 South Asia and 143 kg ha− 1 yr− 1 in Latin America. Genetic trend was, in part, related to the extent of deployment of new breeding tools in each pipeline, strength of an extensive phenotyping network, and funding stability. Over the past decade, CIMMYT’s breeding pipelines have significantly evolved, incorporating new tools/technologies to increase selection accuracy and intensity, while reducing cycle time. The first pipeline, Eastern Africa Product Profile 1a (EA-PP1a), to implement marker-assisted forward-breeding for resistance to key diseases, coupled with rapid-cycle genomic selection for drought, recorded a genetic trend of 2.46% per year highlighting the potential for deploying new tools/technologies to increase genetic gainCIMMYT, Hyderabad and ICA