Wild relatives of domesticated plants have long been recognized as important sources of beneficial traits for crop improvement. Having diverged millions of years ago from the domesticate, they have evolved adaptations to more diverse habitats, potentially representing a much wider genetic diversity than could be captured by intraspecific diversity in a crop and its direct wild progenitor. However, concomitant sequence and karyotype divergence have made crop-wild relatives inaccessible to the cross-and-select cycles of traditional breeding. Thus, the main obstacles to transferring beneficial traits from wild relatives have been the lack of effective methods for gene isolation and fertility barriers. The technological breakthroughs in high-throughput sequencing, genome mapping and genotyping have brought to wild species a full-fledged toolkit for linking genotype and phenotype, namely quantitative trait locus mapping and genome scans in natural population. At the same time, new biotechnological approaches have obliterated the need for overcoming crossing barriers: discrete genetic factors controlling adaptive traits can be isolated in the wild relatives and then transferred into the domesticate by gene editing. Exploiting these innovations, this project aims at understanding speciation and edaphic adaptation in three closely related wild relative of barley from South America. We will elucidate the genetic basis of salt tolerance and transfer it into the domesticate. Our specific aims are to (i) develop a genomics toolbox for a complex of three Hordeum species from Patagonia; (ii) understand the interplay of speciation, adaptation and patterns of sequence diversity by population genomic analyses; and (iii) isolate genes involved in adaptation to saline soils and transform them into domesticated barley.

There is a need for a ground-breaking technology to radically increase crop yields in Europe and beyond. Improved photosynthesis will be the foundation of these radical yield increases. We are an alliance of European plant breeding companies, a phenotyping technology developer and academic plant scientists. Our project aims to translate major advances in photosynthetic improvement from model plant species into three important crop species. We will capitalize on the three most promising strategies in model plants to identify the genetic resources needed to improve the photosynthetic properties of crop plants: (I) tuning of the Calvin cycle, (II) the kinetics of photosynthetic responses to changes in irradiance, and (III) tuning leaf chlorophyll content, thus providing new tools with which to increase the rate of CO2 fixation. To do so, we aim to discover the genetic basis for natural variation in traits associated with each strategy as well as use gene editing and transgenic engineering to improve photosynthesis in three major European crops: barley, tomato and maize. The findings will be used to build a complete roadmap including the feasibility of each specific technique to improve photosynthetic efficiency. Based on precedent, we expect that improving our targeted traits will result in increases in photosynthesis of 10% or more, and there will be added benefits in sustainability via better resource-use efficiency of water and nitrogen. A public dialogue programme will be used to ensure stakeholder engagement and explore further the societal limits to the acceptability of a range of technologies as potential routes to crop improvement. Looking to the 2030 horizon, this project will develop an adaptable strategy able to achieve 10% improvement in photosynthetic efficiency across a wide range of environments.

EUCLEG aims to reduce Europe and China’s dependency on protein imports by developing efficient breeding strategies for the legume crops of major economic importance in human food and animal feed. The objective is to improve diversification, crop productivity, yield stability and protein quality of both forage (alfalfa and red clover) and grain (pea, faba bean and soybean) legumes. Using diverse and extensive genetic resources and taking advantage of advanced molecular tools, EUCLEG aims to identify and develop the best genetic resources, phenotyping methods and molecular tools to breed legume varieties with improved performance under biotic and abiotic stresses in the representative European and Chinese agro-ecological areas. The potential for new uses of forage species for human nutrition will be explored. Searchable databases will be developed or built to host passport, agronomic and genetic data facilitating exchanges and use of genetic resources. The evaluation of genetic resources in multi-site trials will allow to broaden the breeding material and extend agro-ecological adaptation. The genetic architecture of key breeding traits will be analysed using association studies in order to identify molecular markers related to phenotypic traits. Finally, genomic selection strategies will be assessed for their potential to improve genetic progress. Practical tools for genotyping, data management and calculation will be provided to breeders to implement marker-assisted selection and genomic selection leading to the creation of new varieties in the long-term. The partnership gathered in EUCLEG, combining public institutes and private companies of Europe and China, guaranties the transfer of knowledge from research to seed industry.