Public Breeding Research Articles

Economical optimization of a breeding scheme by selective phenotyping of the calibration set in a multi-trait context: application to bread making quality.

Trait-assisted genomic prediction approach is a way to improve genetic gain by cost unit, by reducing budget allocated to phenotyping or by increasing the program's size for the same budget. This study compares different strategies of genomic prediction to optimize resource allocation in breeding schemes by using information from cheaper correlated traits to predict a more expensive trait of interest. We used bread wheat baking score (BMS) calculated for French registration as a case study. To conduct this project, 398 lines from a public breeding program were genotyped and phenotyped for BMS and correlated traits in 11 locations in France between 2000 and 2016. Single-trait (ST), multi-trait (MT) and trait-assisted (TA) strategies were compared in terms of predictive ability and cost. In MT and TA strategies, information from dough strength (W), a cheaper trait correlated with BMS (r = 0.45), was evaluated in the training population or in both the training and the validation sets, respectively. TA models allowed to reduce the budget allocated to phenotyping by up to 65% while maintaining the predictive ability of BMS. TA models also improved the predictive ability of BMS compared to ST models for a fixed budget (maximum gain: + 0.14 in cross-validation and + 0.21 in forward prediction). We also demonstrated that the budget can be further reduced by approximately one fourth while maintaining the same predictive ability by reducing the number of phenotypic records to estimate BMS adjusted means. In addition, we showed that the choice of the lines to be phenotyped can be optimized to minimize cost or maximize predictive ability. To do so, we extended the mean of the generalized coefficient of determination (CDmean) criterion to the multi-trait context (CDmulti).

On to the next chapter for crop breeding: Convergence with data science

AbstractCrop breeding is as ancient as the invention of cultivation. In essence, the objective of crop breeding is to improve plant fitness under human cultivation conditions, making crops more productive while maintaining consistency in life cycle and quality. Predictive breeding has been demonstrated in the agricultural industry and in public breeding programs for over a decade. The massive stores of data that have been generated by industry, farmers, and scholars through several decades have finally been recognized as a potential asset that can be brought to bear on specific breeding decisions. A wide range of analytical methods that were initially developed for various other quantitative disciplines, such as machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence, are now being adapted for application in crop breeding to support analytics and decision making processes. This convergence between data science and crop breeding analytics is expected to address long‐standing gaps in crop breeding analytics, and realize the potential of applying advanced analytics to multidimensional data such as geospatial variables, a multitude of phenotypic responses, and genetic information. Here, we summarize the few existing examples followed by perspectives on where else these technologies would have applications to accelerate operational aspects of crop breeding and agricultural product development efforts.

Preserving Spring Oat Yields in New York Through Varietal Resistance to Crown Rust

Crown rust is the principal disease of spring oat in New York. Management with resistance genes is effective but contingent on understanding varietal responses to local pathogen populations. Field studies were conducted from 2015 to 2018 to assess the crown rust susceptibility of commercial cultivars and public breeding lines under natural conditions in New York. Three of the 10 commercial varieties trialed were determined to be resistant, and breeding lines from five different states also exhibited resistance. On average, yield was reduced by 34.56 kg/ha for every 1% increase in crown rust severity, whereas the impact on test weight was negligible. A race differential panel was deployed in 2018 at a central screening nursery to determine the range of pathogen virulence present. Susceptible interactions were observed on only five crown rust differentials, and virulence on all five has been recorded at high levels across the country. Crown rust may be a limiting factor to oat production in New York, but yield potential and crop value can be preserved by planting an appropriately resistant variety.

Registration of CA 4007 cotton germplasm line for water‐limited production

AbstractIncreasing demands for irrigation and declining water availability are becoming critical issues in the Texas High Plains, the primary cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) growing area of the United States. Developing breeding lines suitable for water‐limited production is an important objective of the Texas A&M AgriLife Research cotton breeding program in Lubbock. CA 4007 cotton germplasm (Reg. no. GP‐1062, PI 691459) was derived from a 1993 cross of Verhalen V83‐116 with CA 2159, informal historical releases developed by cotton breeding programs at Oklahoma State University and Texas A&M AgriLife Research in Lubbock, respectively. Performance testing for yield, fiber quality, and other related agronomic properties was conducted in rainfed and irrigated conditions during the 2007, 2008, and 2009 growing seasons. Based on yield performance and other agronomic properties, CA 4007 was included in experiments to evaluate cotton genotypes’ response to moisture stress and its impact on yield, fiber quality, and other agronomic traits. Results indicate that CA 4007 germplasm developed from lines released in two southwestern United States public breeding programs produced good yield and fiber quality under water‐limited production across several growing seasons when compared to commercial production check cultivars in the Texas High Plains.

The home field advantage of modern plant breeding.

Since the mid-20th century, crop breeding has driven unprecedented yield gains. Breeders generally select for broadly- and reliably-performing varieties that display little genotype-by-environment interaction (GxE). In contrast, ecological theory predicts that across environments that vary spatially or temporally, the most productive population will be a mixture of narrowly adapted specialists. We quantified patterns of broad and narrow adaptation in modern, commercial maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids planted across 216 site-years, from 1999–2018, for the University of Illinois yield trials. We found that location was the dominant source of yield variation (44.5%), and yearly weather was the smallest (1.7%), which suggested a benefit for reliable performance in narrow biophysical environments. Varieties displayed a large “home field advantage” when growing in the location of best performance relative to other varieties. Home field advantage accounted for 19% of GxE and provided a yield increase of 1.01 ± 0.04 Mg ∙ ha-1 (7.6% relative to mean yield), yet was both smaller than predicted by a null model and unchanged across time. This counterfactual suggests that commercial breeding programs have missed an opportunity to further increase yields by leveraging local adaptation. Public breeding programs may pursue this opportunity by releasing specialist varieties that perform reliably in narrow environments. As seed sources are increasingly privatized and consolidated, this alternate strategy may compliment private breeding to support global food security.

Competitive Business Strategy of a Public Breeding Institute

Due to squeezed public budgets in both developing and developed countries, the governments’ policy often include privatization of public plant breeding institutes as a proposed solution to the problem. Since vast of commercial plant cultivars have been developed by conventional breeding techniques, the interest for acquiring such institutions raised over the last several decades. However, not much attention has been paid to developing competitive business strategy within the public Institutes so the customers and society may still benefit from the both its value proposition and public good. At the Osijek Agricultural Institute, Croatia, an early developed focus-and-customer-relationship competitive business strategy has always been a linchpin that could financially and technically underpin plant breeders’ education, development of new cultivars and improvement of plant science in the Pannonia region of southeastern Europe. Not less important, this kind of strategy that rely much on personal connection with the customers results better in both - their buying experience and our price positioning in the seed market. It seems that, besides pure transaction, the customers especially appreciate every contact that cannot be found online. Every improvement in this segment of customers’ captivity is crucial and therefore of utmost importance for keeping our business strategy competitive, sustainable and enhanced. The example of the Osijek Agricultural Institute that is presented in this paper shows that regardless of being for-profit entity such as a public owned or private research institute, knowledge on choosing and pursuing a proper business strategy is a point of paramount importance, i.e., it is the question of life or death for every kind of market oriented entity.

SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATIONAL AND PEDAGOGICAL ACTIVITY OF THE CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE USSR ACADEMY OF SCIENCES M. O. TYULENYEV (1889 – 1969): UNKNOWN AND FORGOTTEN PAGES OF LIFE AND CREATIVITY

Summary . The purpose of the article is to highlight the creative achievements in the field of the drainage land reclamation in Ukraine of a prominent scientist, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR M. O. Tyulenyeva . The research methodology is based on the general scientific principles of the historical accuracy, objectivity, systematicity, complexity and scientific nature. M. O. Tyulenyev'slife and achievements in the development of domestic reclamation science have been reconstructed, using the method of the historical and scientific analysis with the involvement of the previously inaccessible documents.The author used the general scientific, interdisciplinary and special historical methods, as well as a diverse source base, based on the archival documents. The scientific novelty of the article –for the first time it has been determined that, thanks to the development and practical recommendations of M. O. Tyulenyev, first of all, in the 1920-ies – 1930-ies of the previous century, there took place an organizational formation of the scientific support system for the drainage reclamation in the Ukrainian SSR, its preservation during the German occupation of 1941 – 1943 and its rise in the 50-ies – 60-ies of the XXth century. The conclusions . It has been proved that the scientist outlined the basic technological elements that allow a rational use of 3.3 million hectares of dried soils from more than 5 million reclamation fund of Ukraine.Their full and systematic introduction on the background of a primary tillage, a systematic use of fertilizers, the implementation of rational crop rotations and bilateral regulation of the water-air regime will allow to preserve the potential fertility of the drained lands and prevent their degradation.I t ha s been illustrated that, on this basis, the growth and development of, first of all, a public animal breeding could occur for the needs of the country. M. O. Tyulenyev 'ss cientific research es remain a « road map » for posterity to this day. It is not by chance that the Ukrainian Parliament adopted the act to celebrate the 130th anniversary of the birth of M. O Tyulenyev in 2019 at the state level . Thescientistdidmuch in the name of the future and especially in the aspects of the theory, methodology and practice of an agricultural land reclamation .

Economic impact of marker-assisted selection and rapid generation advance on breeding programs

Plant breeding for the generation of cultivars adapted to local conditions has been an important and strategic concern of developing countries with agriculture-based economies. Considering economic constraints, breeders must improve genetic gain to increase the delivery of better cultivars with lower costs, through the implementation of molecular breeding and rapid generation advance. The aim of this work is to assess the actual economic impact of the implementation of these technologies on genetic gain for yield, rice blast disease resistance, and grain amylose content in a conventional rice breeding program. This analysis is intended as a case study of public breeding programs in developing countries. To accomplish this objective, cost analyses and genetic gain estimations were performed for four rice breeding scenarios: conventional and marker-assisted selection, with and without rapid generation advance. These estimations were then used to develop a cost index reflecting the breeding efficiency. The most efficient method was found to depend on the objective trait considered. For yield, there are small variations in genetic gain, but in terms of costs, the application of technology increases the breeding efficiency. For rice blast resistance, marker-assisted selection is not an efficient option when not using rapid generation advance. Conversely, the efficiency of marker-assisted selection increases when using rapid generation advance. For grain amylose content, the greatest effect on genetic gain is obtained when using marker-assisted selection. Rapid generation advance always increases the breeding efficiency. The use of new technological tools is recommended in terms of the cost–benefit function.

Genome-wide genetic diversity is maintained through decades of soybean breeding in Canada.

Genetic diversity in Canadian soybean is maintained over decades of selection in two public breeding programs. Breeders have used a portion of the genetic diversity available in germplasm collections. Both public and private breeding efforts have been critical for the development of soybean cultivars grown around the world. Global genetic diversity of soybean has been well characterized; however, this diversity is not well studied at the breeding program scale. The objective of this study was to characterize genetic diversity over decades of breeding in two public soybean breeding programs at the University of Guelph, Canada. To address this objective, a pedigree-related panel combining 296 soybean accessions from the Ridgetown and Guelph Campus breeding programs was studied. The accessions were genotyped using genotyping-by-sequencing, imputed using the GmHapMap reference genotypes resulting in more than 3.8M SNPs, further filtered to 77k SNPs. Population structure analysis did not identify structure between the breeding programs and historical germplasm. The linkage disequilibrium decay ranged from 400 to 600kb on average in euchromatic regions. Nucleotide diversity over decades of breeding shows that historical accessions had the highest nucleotide diversity, with significant decreases corresponding to the initial breeding activity in Canada; however, genetic diversity has increased in the last 20years in both breeding programs. Maturity gene E2 was nearly fixed for e2 in Ridgetown accessions, while unfixed in Guelph accessions. Comparison of the breeding programs to the USDA germplasm collection reveals that breeders have only used a portion of the available genetic diversity, allowing future breeders to exploit this untapped resource. The approach used in this study may be of interest to other breeding programs for evaluating changes in genetic diversity resulting from breeding activities.

Genetic Gain for Yield and Allelic Diversity over 35 Years of Durum Wheat Breeding at ICARDA

The ICARDA’s durum wheat breeding program was established in 1977 in Aleppo, Syria, where it continued its work targeted to the drylands of the developing world until 2012, when it was forced to relocate. This movement represented an occasion to measure the impact of 35 years of public breeding via a detailed genetic gain (GG) study. A total of 22 ICARDA’s historical entries representing three decades of work (1974–1984, 1985–1994, or 1995–2004), were placed in competition with elites from the most recent decade (2005–2011). A total of 10 environments and 7 sites were used for the assessment. Decade-wise GG for grain yield was measured to reveal >9% (equal 0.9% per year) at 8 of the environments, while no progress was found for the dry and cold conditions of the Atlas Mountains. Combined analysis revealed an average GG per year of 0.7%, mostly driven by earlier flowering and an increase in spike density. The germplasm was also characterized with 60 polymorphic SNPs to reveal that the breeding process has already eroded 6.3% of the original genetic diversity, and that over 3-folds reduction has occurred for rare alleles. Clustering analysis confirmed that two sub-populations have substantially disappeared under the breeding selection pressure. The results presented here show that good progress was made till now, but at the cost of reducing genetic diversity and pushing toward very early genotypes. A revamped strategy is then needed to continue delivering germplasm that is meaningful to breeders worldwide.

Cherry breeding in the world: current analysis and future perspectives

Modern cherry breeding is relatively recent, as compared to other major crops. Nevertheless, in the last 30 years, numerous cultivars have been released, which has contributed to a significant increase in cherry production. The most important public breeding programs launched during the XXth century remain still active and new programs emerge in countries such as Chile, China or Spain. More recently, private actors are playing an increasingly important role, in particular those located in California, which conduct breeding preferentially for early-maturing and low-chilling cultivars. Nevertheless, cherry production faces significant threats, either related to the consequences of the global climate change (and in particular to the global warming) or to the emergence of new pest and diseases (such as for example the fly Drosophila suzukii). Hence, breeder have to incorporate new traits into their selection schemes, on top of the traditional and unavoidable ones, such as productivity, fruit size and firmness, tasting quality, etc. However, because of specific characteristics and of the length of the juvenility period, breeding has been traditionally limited to a rather narrow genetic base. Thus, it might not be straightforward to find interesting alleles in the breeder’ portfolios for traits of adaptability to biotic and abiotic stresses. For this reason, the preservation and characterization of germplasm resources should be considered as an urgent priority. With the recent technological developments in the area of molecular biology and bioinformatics, the use of DNA-based information, through molecular marker-assisted selection approaches, has become a reality for cherry breeder. Although important research efforts are still needed in order to disentangle the genetic determinism of the main traits of agronomic interest, these methodologies allow already significant reductions in the breeding costs. In this paper, the major goals and methodologies currently considered by sweet cherry breeder will be reviewed, and perspectives with regards to new directions and needs will be briefly developed.

Genetic Covariance of Environments in the Potato National Chip Processing Trial

The National Chip Processing Trial is a collaborative effort between public breeding programs and the potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) industry to identify new clones with broad adaptation. The objective of this study was to investigate the genetic covariance of trial locations, based on 337 clones evaluated in 10 states from 2011 to 2016. Three models were considered: (I) assuming a uniform genetic correlation between locations within a year, (II) using a factor‐analytic (FA) model of the total genetic covariance of environments (location–year combinations), and (III) using a FA model of the additive genetic covariance based on 5278 single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. With Model I, the genetic correlation between locations was 0.50 for vine maturity, 0.54 for tuber yield, and 0.72 for specific gravity. The Akaike information criterion decreased as model complexity increased, from Models I to II to III, for maturity and yield but not specific gravity. Of the 10 states in the dataset, Florida stood out for having environments with substantial (up to 88%) genetic variance unexplained by the latent factors. Linear discriminants (LD) of the factor loadings were used to visualize the genetic correlation between locations. For vine maturity, LD1 separated Florida from the other locations, and LD2 separated the remaining southern locations from the northern ones. For yield, LD1 separated Texas from the other locations. This study has created a foundation for the design of more efficient trialing and selection programs for the US potato community.

The role of public wheat breeding in reducing food insecurity in South Africa.

Although classified as an upper middle-income country, food insecurity is still a concern throughout South Africa, as was evident in 2014–2015 when a drought left 22% of households food insecure. Further, a range of domestic and international factors make the local currency unstable, leaving South Africa exposed to risk in global wheat and exchange rate markets and increasing its food insecurity vulnerability. As such, agricultural research in South Africa is needed specifically in plant breeding to increase yields and help mitigate future food insecurity. To foster scientific innovation for food security, the South African government funds the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), which conducts holistic research on wheat and other crops. This study estimates the proportions of increases in yield of ARC’s wheat cultivars, which are attributable solely to genetic improvements. In total, 25,690 yield observations from 125 countrywide test plots from 1998 to 2014 were utilized to estimate the proportions of yield increases attributable to the ARC. We found that South African farmers who adopted the ARC’s wheat varieties experienced an annual yield gain of 0.75%, 0.30%, and 0.093% in winter, facultative, and irrigated spring wheat types, respectively. Using observed area sown to ARC varieties, we estimated that wheat producers gained $106.45 million (2016 USD) during 1992–2015 via the adoption of ARC varieties. We estimated that every dollar invested in the ARC wheat breeding program generated a return of $5.10. Assuming the South African per capita wheat consumption is 60.9 kg/year, our results suggest that the ARC breeding program provided an average of 253,318 additional wheat rations from 1992–2015. Further, the net surplus (consumer plus producer) from the ARC breeding program was estimated at 42.64 million 2016 USD from 1992–2015. Public breeding programs, especially those focused on wheat and other staple foods, must continue if South Africa is to meet growing global food demand, decrease present global food insecurity, and maintain the genetic enhancements that directly enhances yield and benefits low-income consumers.

Across-years prediction of hybrid performance in maize using genomics.

Inclusion of historical training data improved the genomics-based prediction of performance of maize hybrids, the extent depending on the phenotypic trait and genotype-by-year interaction. Prediction of hybrid performance using existing phenotypic data on previous hybrids combined with molecular data collected on the parent lines allows to identify the most promising candidates from a huge number of possible hybrids at an early stage. Phenotypic data on yield and dry matter of 1970 grain maize hybrids from 19years of a public breeding program were aggregated considering the underlying structure of factorial sets of hybrids. Pedigree records and 50K SNP data were collected on their 170 Dent and 127 Flint parent lines. The performance of untested hybrids was predicted by best linear unbiased predictors (BLUP) on basis of pedigree or genomic data. For composition of training sets (TRN) and test sets (TST), three schemes for collecting factorials from specific years were employed which resulted in 490 scenarios. For each scenario, the predictive ability and genomic relationship between TRN and TST hybrids were determined. For extended TRNs, where earlier years were successively added to the TRN, the maximum relationship increased and the predictive ability improved, with the extent of the latter depending on the phenotypic trait and its genotype-by-year interaction. Genomic BLUP outperformed pedigree BLUP and better utilized the early years' data, especially for prediction of hybrids from factorials in a more distant future. This study on hybrid prediction in grain maize illustrated that including historical phenotypic data for training, although consisting of less related genotypes, can improve genomic prediction and enables optimization of hybrid variety development.

The influence of single-species crops and their grass mixes on the grass species composition

When creating artificial phytocoenoses, the main task is to create optimal conditions for growth and development, in accordance with the needs of each type of cultivated plants, which would ensure the highest productivity of the group during the entire period of use of herbs and the production of high quality and cheap feed for public livestock breeding. In order to successfully solve the problem of regulating the composition of agrophytocenoses in scientific and practical buckling, it is important to know how the relations between plants in the process of their joint growth and development occurs, which changes take place in the botanical composition not only in species groups, but also in single-species crops of grasses on the eroded slope of steepness 6–7о on the basis of Rivne Institute of Agro-Industrial Production of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences of Ukraine. The results of research showed that it is economically expedient to grow grass-legume grass mixtures with a longer period of productive longevity using the low nitrogen fertilizer rates, which contributes to the formation of phytocenosis, in which valuable species of cereal and perennial bean grasses (beetroot grass and alfalfa sowing). The positive effect on the species composition of the grass was slight mowing in the phase of tubing. The results of the research showed that for the production of grass-legume grass, the hay-grass-free use should be sown with grass mixtures, the following herbs were added to the composition: alfalfa sowed (4.4 million pounds per hectare) + long beetroot horned (4.4 million pounds per hectare) + bromus inermis (3.4 million pounds per hectare) + lolium perenne (3.4 million pounds per hectare) of conditioned seeds that affect the species composition of the grass during the growing season. On the basis of the conducted researches it was established that the analysis of the species composition of the herb shows that the quantitative correlation of the species varied over the years, mainly from the biological characteristics of herbs that were part of the grass mixture. The percentage of sown species of grasses has grown with the age of grass. The results of researches, which showed that in four component grass mixtures, in the fertilization of grass with complete mineral fertilizers in the norm N60P60K90, dominant legume perennial grasses – beetroot horn (25.0%), alfalfa seed (30.9%), and cereals – stokolos seamless (21.7%) and Lolium multiflorum (13.0%). In a small number, during the years of research, self-seedling appeared timothy bean (2.0%), non-infected cereals (4.0%) and herbs – 3.4%. During the years of research on varieties, which were planted with alfalfa seed and beetroot, bean herbs predominated. The percentage of hare cattle was 88.5%, alfalfa seeded 91.4%.

Estimating the benefits of public plant breeding: beyond profits

AbstractIn this study, we estimate increases in producer revenue, total exports, and welfare effects from the genetic gains of the rice breeding program at the University of Arkansas System (UofA) Division of Agriculture from 1983 to 2016. Rice producers are paid based on both the quantity and quality of rice. Therefore, we implement a cluster‐specific fixed‐effects model based on location and year to identify the contributions of the UofA breeding program for both paddy yields (quantity) and head rice yields (quality attribute) over time. Additionally, the estimated increased yield was imputed into the RiceFlow trade model to estimate price and export effects. Including spillover benefits from UofA varieties, we find that on average U.S. rice producers gain 30.9 million USD annually. The expansion of U.S. long grain rice exports facilitated by the UofA is estimated to be 53,000 milled metric tons annually, which is enough to lower rice prices by over 1% in low‐income countries such as Haiti, Panama, and Nicaragua. Overall, the public breeding program at the UofA contributes to (1) positive genetic gains, (2) additional revenue in the Mid‐South, and (3) increased trade between the U.S. and rice‐consuming countries.

Global impact of accelerated plant breeding: Evidence from a meta-analysis on rice breeding.

Rice breeders in Asia and elsewhere in the world have long overlooked trying to shorten the time it takes to develop new varieties. Plant breeders have proposed a technique called Rapid Generation Advance (RGA) as a way to accelerate the results of public rice breeding programs. However, little is known about RGA’s potential impact. Here, we present the first results of a global impact study of RGA. More specifically, we calculated the multiplicator effects of RGA on the research benefits generated by conventional rice breeding programs and applied them to a meta-analysis of selected impact studies in the literature. These insights are a first crucial step in developing a targeted approach for disseminating RGA technology among rice breeders to accelerate the impact of their public rice breeding programs around the world. We show that the additional benefits due to time savings are considerable and offer some insights into the economics of breeding. Our results confirm that the adoption of accelerated breeding would lead to substantial advantages to rice breeding programs and the earlier variety release leads to significant economic benefits to society. This can be important to policy makers when reshaping their public breeding methods and optimising their return on research investments in breeding.

Experience with Descriptors, Registration and Protection of vegetable cultivars: eggplant as a case study

ABSTRACT The Registro Nacional de Cultivares [RNC (National Register of Cultivars)] and the Serviço Nacional de Proteção de Cultivares [SNPC (National Service for Cultivar Protection)] were established by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (MAPA) in 1997. The registration of a cultivar in the RNC allows the production, processing and commercialization of seeds in the country. The right of commercial exploitation, assured by the protection of a cultivar in the SNPC, allows the allocation of resources to public and private breeding programs, and the subsequent launching of new cultivars. The authors’ experience with the theme and its relevance to the public and private sectors provided the base for this article, thus sharing the elements considered relevant in the process of establishing descriptors, registration and protection of cultivars in Brazil, using the eggplant as the focus of the case study. Due to the lack of guidelines for protection of Solanum melongena cultivars in Brazil, 43 eggplant descriptors of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) were evaluated. For the establishment of descriptors, registration and protection of cultivars, relevant factors included: knowledge of the genetic variability of a collection of germplasm and of plant morphology; experience in morphological characterization, assessment of descriptors and crop management in different climatic environments; the tropicalization of descriptors; the time needed for the establishment of descriptors, their approval and adoption by MAPA; the knowledge and compliance with the bureaucratic demands for the effectiveness of the processes; the mobilization of interdisciplinary talents and the support of public research to assist MAPA in the validation of the descriptors.

Assessing morphological characteristics of elite cotton lines from different breeding programmes for low temperature and drought tolerance

AbstractCotton breeders in the United States strive to develop region‐specific genotypes adapted to low temperatures and variable soil moistures during early‐season planting. Nine elite upland cotton germplasm (Gossypium hirsutum L.) lines, representing public breeding programmes from nine states across the cotton belt, were evaluated for cold and drought stresses during seed germination and seedling growth stages. Lines were subjected to three treatments, such as low temperature well‐watered (22/14°C, WW), optimal temperature drought stress (30/22°C, DS) and optimal temperature well‐watered (30/22°C, WW; control), to examine genotypic variability for cold and drought tolerance. The treatment including drought stress was irrigated at 50% of the control. Shoot and root traits measured at 25 days after planting were significantly affected by drought and low temperature, where significant genetic variability among lines was observed for both shoot and root parameters. Response indices were developed to quantify variation in the degree of tolerance among the lines to low temperature and drought. Accordingly, OA‐33 was identified as the most low‐temperature‐tolerant line and Acala 1517‐99 as the most drought‐tolerant line. Identification of both cold‐ and drought‐tolerant genotypes suggests existing genotypic variability could provide breeders the opportunity to improve cultivar response to early‐season drought or cold conditions.

Establishing Best Practices for Germplasm Exchange, Intellectual Property Rights, and Revenue Return to Sustain Public Cultivar Development

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) can play critical roles in protecting the genetic integrity of cultivars and generating revenue to support continued breeding. While private and public seed sectors share the goal of developing improved cultivars, important differences must be considered when using IPRs for publicly developed cultivars. A summit was held to discuss challenges and provide recommendations on IPRs and funding for public plant breeding programs. Recommendations on professional standards for germplasm exchange and best practices for revenue return to public breeding programs are discussed here.