News

NEWS

  • Wheat phenotyping workshop

    The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) extends a cordial invitation to participate in the training workshop "Wheat phenotyping for the identification of germplasm with high yield potential and tolerance to drought and heat". This will be held in CIMMYT HQ, Texcoco, State of Mexico, on September 28th, 2018 (from 9:00 – 14:00 hrs) as part of the II Plant Breeding Symposium México 2018 (https://trasmejoragen.wixsite.com/inicio) The objective of this workshop is to train participants in the phenotypic characterization of wheat germplasm. Research themes include: climate change; priority characteristics for wheat for Mexico; phenotyping of genetically diverse materials and in the ...

  • II Plant Breeding Symposium Mexico 2018

    MasAgro Biodiversity announces the II Plant Breeding Symposium Mexico 2018 which will be held on September 6 and 7, 2018 at the CIMMYT HQ, Texcoco. Mexico. This event belongs to the series of DuPont Plant Sciences Symposia. For more information please visit the website:https://trasmejoragen.wixsite.com/inicio

  • New video: Crop biodiversity for healthy, nutritious livelihoods

    Erratic weather, poor soil health, and resource shortages keep millions of maize and wheat farmers in developing countries from growing enough to feed their households and communities or to harvest a surplus to sell.

  • 3rd KDSmart app workshop

    The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) extends a cordial invitation to participate in the training workshop on the use of the KDSmart app. This will be held in Texcoco, State of Mexico, on December 20, 2017 (from 9:00 - 17:00 hrs).

Read more

Catalogue

PRODUCTS CATALOGUE

PRODUCTS CATALOGUE

MasAgro Biodiversity, a component of the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) program, focuses on the utilization and conservation of valuable genetic resources with genetic diversity protected in germplasm banks. This program has the purpose of accelerating the development of Varieties of maize and wheat that can meet the nutrition and nutritional demands of a growing population, facing the challenges of climate change.

By characterizing the genetic configuration of CIMMYT germplasm bank collections, the evaluation of priority characteristics – such as drought tolerance, high temperatures and some diseases – and the development of bioinformatics tools that streamline its analysis, MasAgro Biodiversity has Generated a “platform for the utilization of genetic resources” of maize and wheat.

This platform puts several products at the disposal of the scientific community. MasAgro Biodiversity also offers some services in order to promote equity in access and benefits of the use of maize and wheat diversity.

Read more


  • Maize Landraces with Putative Heat Tolerance


    These landrace accessions from CIMMYT’s germplasm bank are promising for use in research and pre-breeding for heat tolerance at flowering and grain fill stages of the crop life cycle. They have been identified based on analysis of geographical information system (GIS) descriptors and associated climatic data for their location of origin. Adaptation-based, e.g. lowland tropical or highland, panels have been developed comprising 1000, 500, 250, 100 and 50 landrace accessions. These panels maximize and maintain representativeness of the genomic diversity of the broader landrace collection of interest.

    Product details and features:

       

    1. Panels of accessions with descriptors (BankAccNo and GID) required for online ordering
    2. All accessions available for distribution from the CIMMYT Germplasm Bank
    3. Passport and GIS-derived data for accessions available in flat file and searchable format through Germinate (http://germinate.cimmyt.org/)
    4. Any available phenotypic data for the accessions are available through Germinate
    5. Genotypic data for accessions are available through Germinate.
    6. Summary of analysis and selection methods provided in Dataverse (https://data.cimmyt.org/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:11529/11047)
    7. Summary of Best Landraces for Heat
      (PDF File - 104 KB )

    Back to catalogue


    1. Summary data file providing results of multidimensional scaling of genomic distance with relevant passport, GIS and phenotypic data, provided through Germinate/Dataverse. File formatted for visualization in the software CurlyWhirly (https://ics.hutton.ac.uk/curlywhirly/).
    2. Primary selection of accessions from heat stress prone environments used the following criteria: growing season maximum temperature (Tmax) in any of the growing months >30 degrees Celsius, Tmax in any of the flowering and grain fill months >30 degrees Celsius.

    Availability

    Available September 2017 250 seeds of each accession available upon request via http://www.cimmyt.org/seed-request/#maize

    Comments

    These are unimproved materials, most suited for research or for large breeding programs interested in exploring exotic germplasm sources. These landraces are open pollinated materials carrying significant genotypic and phenotypic heterogeneity and heterozygosity.

    Primary Users

    Maize breeders for whom heat tolerance is a crucial priority trait; maize breeders and geneticists investigating the physiological and molecular basis of heat tolerance; researchers engaged in gene discovery for heat tolerance.

    For more information

    Back to catalogue

RESEARCH PORTFOLIO

RESEARCH PORTFOLIO

Genetic resources

Genetic resources

Capacity

Capacity

Data

Data

Pre-breeding Germplasm

Pre-breeding Germplasm

Knowledge

Knowledge

Software

Software

PHILOSOPHY OF OUR APPROACH

PHILOSOPHY OF OUR APPROACH

So many accessions, so few data!

Many genebanks resemble libraries that lack sufficiently informative catalogs. The advent of next-generation DNA-sequencing platforms has made it possible to characterize the genetic diversity conserved in entire genebanks.

Information management

Generating new data by itself is insufficient if it cannot be effectively disseminated, queried, summarized, visualized, and analyzed. Data generation, therefore, has to go hand-in-hand with providing intuitive software and analysis tools to deal with the rapidly expanding datasets describing maize and wheat genetic resources.

Pre-breeding

A ‘reformatting’ of the diversity in genebanks into a more breeder-ready format could lower the barriers to mobilize novel genetic variation into breeding programs, which in good part are due to the dependency of gene effects on genetic backgrounds.

Traits with complex genetic architecture

Some of the most important challenges to agriculture need to be addressed by manipulating genetically complex characters controlled by small-effect alleles (yield potential, heat and drought tolerance, etc.).

Collecting germplasm.

The availability of sufficient numbers of genebank accessions does not appear to be a factor limiting the use of novel genetic variation in breeding programs, and a new initiative will secure the global network of genebanks of humanity’s major food crops for future generations.