In order to secure agricultural yields in times of climate change under the premises of more sustainability, we need to develop new adapted varieties of our crops. These varieties need to be able to cope with heat and drought periods, while growing with reduced amounts of fertilizers and pesticides.
In pursuance of creating new varieties adapted to changing environmental conditions, breeding requires genetic variation across the complete available gene pool(s) of crops. However, after crossing landraces or wild relatives of our crops and breeding material, it is necessary to remove undesirable traits through breeding and selection. This is a process upstream of commercial variety breeding and is known as pre-breeding.
Realizing the potential of genetic resources: Pre-Breeding
We conduct breeding research in the field of pre-breeding on crops such as potato, rye, oats and lupin. For example, resistance to late blight and nematodes was achieved by crossing South American wild potato species and modern cultivars (link to EffiKar and SERAP).
In order to provide oats with a new resistance to powdery mildew, crosses were made with wild oats (Avena eriantha) (link Oats). In both narrow-leafed and yellow lupin, we identified genes for anthracnose resistance and integrated them into breeding (link Lupibreed, Innoluteus).
Explore advantages of new crop types
In addition to our existing crops, we also use plant genetic resources in order to domesticate new crop types from wild species. For example, our institute is involved in several projects working on Russian dandelion (link to TAKOWIND III/IV). High-quality rubber is produced in the roots of dandelion plants, which is an important resource for a sustainable industry. Dandelion grows even on marginal soils of our temperate climate and it can contribute to the protection of tropical rainforests, as a sustainable alternative crop to imports of natural rubber from rubber tree plantations.
With our research, we aim to understand the heritage of desirable traits and develop material through pre-breeding, which flows straight in to commercial plant breeding programs of project partners for the development of improved varieties.