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).

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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.

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Sukhwinder Singh, head of the wheat portfolio at SeeD, meets with Ph.D. student Lourdes Ledesma and Ernesto Solis of INIFAP’s Mexico Wheat Research Program for el Bajio in Guanajuato, Mexico to evaluate bread wheat seed trials. Photo: SeeD.

The genetic diversity conserved in wheat genebanks around the world represents the genetic heritage of wheat, its progenitors and wild relatives. The conserved collections potentially harbor many undiscovered genes, alleles and/or haplotypes that yet have to be harnessed for wheat improvement.

In the Wheat component of SeeD we systematically explore the genetic richness of wheat to enable the targeted broadening of the genetic base of wheat breeding programs. We are working towards the following three interrelated objectives, each comprising a group of well-defined outputs:

  • Objective 1: Build a molecular atlas for wheat. We are using a sequence based genotyping approach, DArTseq, that scores both SNP and PAV polymorphisms to quantify genetic relationships amongst genebank accessions with minimum ascertainment bias. One phenotypically representative individual per accession is genotyped, and seed from the genotyped individual are harvested for subsequent multiplication and refined phenotypic analyses for association-mapping applications (Objective 2). The resulting collection of genome profiles of accessions and breeding materials from the genebanks at CIMMYT and ICARDA, along with links to existing passport and characterization/evaluation data, are and will continue to be represented in a searchable ‘Wheat Molecular Atlas’. The objective also includes the generation and characterization of new bread wheat synthetics to mobilize unused progenitor diversity into the primary genepool.

Trial to screen for phosphorus efficiency, coordinated by Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio (CIMMYT). Photo: CIMMYT.

  • Objective 2: Identify promising accessions and beneficial loci/alleles. In this objective, we evaluate genebank accessions for a set of priority traits (breeding targets) to (a) sample accessions into trait-specific subsets and association-mapping panels and (b) to identify promising ‘donor accession’ for trait mobilization. Depending on the trait, varying numbers of accessions are being evaluated in the field. Given the importance of heat and drought tolerance, the majority of CIMMYT’s genebank accessions are being evaluated for these traits. Association mapping will focus on panels assembled from the descents of genotyped individuals, selected based on genetic relationships and trait values measured at the whole-accession level.

Research assistant Marisa Delgado next to a rye landrace plot. Photo: CIMMYT.

  • Objective 3: Develop wheat bridging germplasm. The final objective harnesses and combines outputs of the first two, to develop (a) a ‘linked topcross panel’ (LTP) of fixed lines, which contain a diverse representation of exotic alleles in elite genetic backgrounds for penetrance testing, joint linkage/association-mapping applications and trait mobilization into breeding programs, and (b) a recurrent introgressive population to capture and enrich beneficial small-effect alleles from different exotic accessions in a predominately elite background. The two kinds of ‘bridging germplasm’ will be made available to breeders, along with information about identified marker-trait associations and genomic estimates of breeding values to facilitate downstream introgression efforts.

To stimulate innovation and crowdsourcing-based data mining, all wheat datasets and attribution information will be made publicly available via the Wheat Molecular Atlas no later than 24 months after their generation (so that those who generated the data have an opportunity to draft scientific publications to add value to the data).

 

For more information please contact us at: seed@masagro.org

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.