Traditional breeding: major challenges and potentials

1. Traditional breeding:major challenges and potentials Bert Visser Copenhagen, 13 december 2005

2. Scope of this presentation (1) • challenges • reaching the rural poor • decreasing malnutrition • accepting limits to land use • absorbing increased meat consumption • coping with water scarcity • maintaining genetic diversity • dealing with power relations

3. Scope of this presentation (2) • potentials • focusing on rural poor • harnessing modern technologies • facilitating access to modern technologies and breeding materials • exploiting genetic resources • involving farmers through participatory breeding • including organic production and low-external-input agriculture

4. Challenges

5. Decreasing malnutrition • 800 million people undernourished (Borlaug and Dowswell, 2003) • half of them live on marginal lands and depend on agriculture • population undernourished • 33% in Sub-Saharan Africa • 16% in Asia/Pacific • 10% in Latin America • total calories and composition of the diet both relevant

6. Meat consumption and water scarcity • increase in meat demand will drive world cereal demand • 40 – 50% in next three decades • irrigated agriculture consumes 70% of global water withdrawal • 40% of global food production from irrigated lands • 60% of global cereal production from irrigated lands

7. Increasing food production • three ways • expanding land area • increasing cropping frequency • raising crop yields • limited options for area expansion • 85% of production must come from existing agricultural lands (Borlaug and Dowswell, 2003)

8. Genetic erosion • Genetic erosion ongoing • on-farm through variety replacement and globalization • in situ through habitat destruction • ex situ through poor genebank management and under-funding

9. Inequalities • access to technologies and breeding materials increasingly limited • poverty • government regulations • intellectual property rights • inequalities at different levels • between states and regions (international level) • between population groups (national level)

10. Potentials

11. strategic breeding choices (1) • crops with shorter growth cycles • from one to two/two to three crops/year • also increased multiple cropping, shortened fallow period • changes in plant architecture (ideotype breeding) • more erect stature • reduction in tiller number • increase in grains per panicle • stiffer straw (Kush, 2003)

12. strategic breeding choices (2) • direct seeding of rice • high potential yield increases (20 – 25%) • higher water use efficiency • water management and genetic adaptations • lower external input needs • reaching the rural poor • more efficient mineral use

13. strategic breeding choices (3) • focus on Sub-Saharan Africa • no impact of Green Revolution • specific crops, specific conditions • focus on breeding in underutilized and neglected crops • vitamin A-deficiency may be corrected through Golden Rice, or • vitamin A-deficiency might be combatted through improved diet including affordable vegetables and fruits

14. Harnessing modern technologies (1) • genomics (X-omics) of model species • Arabidopsis thaliana as a general reference • rice for monocots, cotton for fibre crops, tomato for berry-bearing crops • bio-informatics • cereal sequence information rate growth 6X overall growth (Bowers, 2003) • exploitation of DNA sequence information to accelerate breeding

15. Harnessing modern technologies (2) • wide crosses • advanced backcrossing using wild relatives (Tanksley, 2003) • breeding with quantitative trait loci • marker-assisted breeding/selection (Tuberosa et al., 2003) • preceding fine understanding of individual gene contributions • accelerating breeding in wheat and barley with 5 – 7 years

16. Exploiting genetic resources • from: genebanks as a source of resistance traits • number one from CGN user questionnaire • to: genebanks as a source for all relevant traits • for 30% of QTLs for any trait wild relatives allele superior • Oryza rufipogon genes may increase rice yields with 18% • thus: wild relatives extremely useful • diversity in domesticates relatively better exploited

17. Enhancing participatory breeding • complementing strengths of breeders and farmers • various forms, larger outreach (Sperling, 2002) • depends on mutual full acceptance (culture change) • removing regulatory barriers to farmers’ varieties • many modern farmers’ varieties based on introgression from commercial varieties (Visser, 2005/2006)

18. Adapting to low-external-input agriculture • increasing efficiency of water and fertiliser use • QTL breeding • improving resistances • pyramiding • ‘horizontal’ next to gene-for gene resistances • spin-offs for organic agriculture • ‘voluntary’ low-external input agriculture (Lammerts van Bueren et al., 2005)

19. Conclusions (1) • many modern technologies instrumental in traditional breeding • huge improvement of breeding process • many unutilized options to respond to challenges using non-GM technology • wider application of such options needed • training of breeders and farmers essential • access to technology crucial • pivotal role IPR-holders; humanitarian licenses

20. Conclusions (2) • realization of potentials depends on training and sharing technology and (intermediate) products • possible for traditional breeding, unlikely for GM technology • plant breeder’s rights less rigid than patents