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NIAB superwheat expertise to aid India wheat breeding


United Kingdom
Novewmber 27, 2014

NIAB’s UK superwheat research could soon be helping improve the heat tolerance of wheat crops in India.

Researchers from NIAB, India’s Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) and the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI) are collaborating on a £1 million project, codenamed SHWheat, to combine NIAB’s expertise in wheat pre-breeding technologies with research strengths in India.

The project is part of a £10 million research collaboration with India to provide crops suitable for a changing climate and to produce more food with fewer inputs. Seven projects have been jointly funded by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and India’s Department of Biotechnology (DBT) under the ‘Crop Genomics and Technologies’ (CGAT) call. The UK project funding for SHWheat includes £510,000 from BBSRC and £127,000 from other sources.

Programme Leader Dr James Cockram explains that NIAB’s work on improving the genetic diversity of the UK crop through the development of resynthesised wheat - created by crossing durum wheat with a wild goatgrass - will be used to help search for new sources of drought and heat tolerance. These will then be integrated into local breeding programmes.

Globally, a relatively narrow genetic base hampers wheat improvement by reducing its ability to adapt to biotic and abiotic stresses. The recent development of breeding strategies incorporating genomics and pre-breeding approaches has seen increases in UK wheat yields, and the potential for genetic improvement in crops in the developing world is considerable.

NIAB’s Research Director Professor Andy Greenland says: “Heat stress is a major limit to yield potential in Indian wheat, and is also predicted to become increasingly relevant to UK production given climate change scenarios, so this research will have relevance in both countries.”

The SHWheat project will create a multi-parent population using resynthesised wheat specifically selected for heat tolerance, and apply wheat genomics tools to genetically characterise these traits. As in the UK, these heat tolerance traits will then be made available to Indian wheat breeders for integration into current breeding programmes.

“This is a great opportunity for UK and Indian colleagues working on wheat research and pre-breeding to share complementary research and expertise.  The inclusion of two PhD studentships within the project will also help train new Indian scientists in the globally important area of crop research and food security,” finishes Dr Cockram.



More news from:
    . NIAB (National Institute of Agricultural Botany)
    . Punjab Agricultural University (PAU)


Website: http://www.niab.com

Published: November 27, 2014

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