Talk at EWAC workshop 2011

1. Adapting agriculture to climate
change: collecting, protecting and
preparing crop wild relatives
Luigi Guarino & Hannes Dempewolf
- The Global Crop Diversity Trust -

2. What is the Global Crop Diversity Trust?
• Public-private partnership raising an endowment fund
that will provide continuous funding for key crop
collections (starting with CG collections)
• Goal: “to advance an efficient and sustainable global
system of ex situ conservation by promoting the
rescue, understanding, use and long-term
conservation of valuable plant genetic resources”
• Part of the funding strategy of the International Treaty
for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
(ITPGRFA)

3. GENESYS
http://www.genesys-pgr.org/

4. Svalbard Global Seed Vault

5. The Trust’s initiative on crop wild relatives
• The 26 focal crops of this project are:
alfalfa, apple, bambara
groundnut, banana, barley, bean, carrot, chickpea, cowpea
, eggplant, faba bean, finger
millet, grasspea, lentil, oat, pea, pearl millet, pigeon
pea, potato, rice, rye, sorghum, sunflower, sweet
potato, vetch and wheat
• Focus of gap analysis:
• barley: 2 CWR taxa
• oat: 12 CWR taxa
• rye: 4 CWR taxa
• wheat: 55 CWR taxa

6. The Trust’s initiative on crop wild relatives
• The 26 focal crops of this project are:
alfalfa, apple, bambara
groundnut, banana, barley, bean, carrot, chickpea, cowpea
, eggplant, faba bean, finger
millet, grasspea, lentil, oat, pea, pearl millet, pigeon
pea, potato, rice, rye, sorghum, sunflower, sweet
potato, vetch and wheat
• Focus of priority setting:
• barley: 2 CWR taxa
• oat: 12 CWR taxa
• rye: 4 CWR taxa
• wheat: 55 CWR taxa

7. Targeting “missing” diversity
http://gisweb.ciat.cgiar.org/GapAnalysis/

8. Targeting threatened diversity

9. Pre-breeding
“It's a bit like crossing a house cat with a wildcat. You don't
automatically get a big docile pussycat. What you get is a lot of
wildness that you probably don't want Iying on your sofa.”

10. Other (better?) alternatives
• First evaluation, then pre-breeding
• QTL (and MAS) approach
• Sequence-based transcriptomics
• Candidate gene approach
…. ?

11. Survey of pre-breeding experts
1. Which wild species or population(s) of crop wild relatives do
you think should be targeted first and foremost?
2. Which wild species or population(s) do you feel are currently
under-represented in ex situ collections and should be targeted
during the collecting activities of this project?
3. Which traits would you target (especially with reference to
traits that are important in a climate change context)?
 So far a total of 79 expert responses were collected
 22 responses for wheat, but only few for barley, oat and rye

12. Survey results for wheat
1. Which wild species or population(s) of crop wild relatives do you
think should be targeted first and foremost?
Summary:
• Aegilops tauschii and rye (Secale cereale) likely the species that will make the
most, immediate impact on wheat improvement over the next 2 decades.
• The genus Dasypyrum
• The entire genus Secale, because most members of that genus have
been domesticated and thus would present significantly less linkage
drag when incorporated into wheat…
• wheat diploid and tetraploid relatives – T. speltoides, T. uratu, T.
dicoccoides
• Genus: Thinopyrum
• South American Hordeum species

13. Survey results for wheat
2. Which wild species or population(s) do you feel are currently
under represented in ex situ collections and should be targeted
during the collecting activities of this project?
Summary:
• Aegilops tauschii and Aegilops speltoides (from Iran)
• Genus Dasypyrum
• Triticum speltoides and Triticum tauschii
• Low ploidy species in Thinopyrum genus
• All wild Triticum/Aegilops spp. and Amblyopyrum muticum
• Triticum urartu in Iran
• South American Hordeum species
• The former Agropyron species (Thinoprum ponticum, Thinopyrum
intermedium) and their progenitors (Pseudorogneria species, Th.
bessarabicum)
• Triticum dicoccoides, Triticum aestivum var spelta, and the
monococcums

14. Survey results for wheat
3. Which traits would you target (especially with reference to traits
that are important in a climate change context)?
Summary:
• Heat tolerance (particularly to high night temperatures); root architecture;
soil borne pathogens; tolerance or efficiency to micronutrient deficiency and
toxicity; phosphorus and nitrogen use efficiency; water use efficiency; new
sources of dwarfing genes; wheat blast resistance; insect pest resistances.
• Various forms of abiotic stress including drought stress, heat stress, winter
hardiness, aluminum tolerance, boron deficiency tolerance, and water use
efficiency.
• Phenology traits (photoperiod, vernalization, earliness per se, flowering)
• Earliness in flowering
• Perenniallity
• Any traits (biochemical, physical) that confer tolerance to extreme
temperatures and low soil moisture.
• Photosynthesis and dark respiration data in cereal leaves.
• Salt stress
• Root characters, which have been neglected for 100 years.

15. Other points to discuss
• Wheat re-synthesis approach
• Focus on Dasypyrum for wheat pre-breeding
• Advice on oat, rye and barley pre-breeding needed!

16. Please consider completing the survey…
… if you haven’t done so already.
Survey: http://goo.gl/08MX1
Or email: hannes.dempewolf@croptrust.org

17. Thank you for your attention!