These projects comprise:

• Applying and Combining Disturbance and Competition for an agro-ecological management of creeping perennial weeds (AC/DC-weeds)
• Diploid Inbreds For Fixation, and Unreduced GAmetes for Tetraploidy – A novel Fixation-Restitution Breeding method for potato (DIFFUGAT)
• Harnessing the potato-microbiome interactions for development of sustainable breeding and production strategies (potatoMETAbiome)
• Development of lodging-resistant and climate-smart rye – a contribution to a sustainable cereal production in marginal environments (RYE-SUS)
• Knowledge-driven genomic predictions for sustainable disease resistance in wheat (WheatSustain)
• Resilience to salinity in tomato (ROOT)
• Delivering novel maize genotypes with improved resilience and PROductivity through the application of predictive breeding technologies to modulate STRIGolactone levels (PROSTRIG)
• Developing resilience and tolerance of crop resource use efficiency to climate change and air pollution (SUSCAP)
• Tomato and eggplant nitrogen utilization efficiency in Mediterranean environments (SOLNUE)

To take just a few examples of the type of work these projects are tackling, AC/DC-weeds is developing agroecological technologies to manage creeping perennial weeds on arable land. It is focusing on three species which are important in northern and central Europe, investigating new techniques and optimising crop husbandry. Since creeping perennials occur in patches, researchers are work on mapping, identifying and delineating them in fields using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones).

The potatoMETAbiome project is seeking to exploit the principle that plants naturally interact with beneficial (soil) microbes, making them less dependent on synthetic inputs. The SusCrop website notes: “The greater the belowground diversity in the soil the better the prospects of plant roots to recruit beneficial microbes to mobilise nutrients, reduce stresses and suppress pathogens. This approach will be particularly beneficial for potato cultivation where many varieties have underdeveloped root systems and are susceptible to pests and other environmental stress factors.

“This project aims at identifying potato genotypes that interact effectively with the soil microbiome, thus generating cultivars that have reduced dependencies on external inputs (synthetic fertilisers and pesticides) while maintaining high yield, under non-stress as well as biotic (pathogen pressure) and abiotic stress conditions.”

WheatSustain notes that high-density low-cost marker genotyping platforms have enabled a paradigm shift in plant breeding, using genomic selection (GS) to predict the breeding values of progeny lines without costly phenotyping. The SusCrop website says: “While being useful, prediction accuracies are fairly low for complex disease resistances like stripe rust and Fusarium Head Blight, two devastating plant diseases affecting European and North American wheat production.

It adds: “WheatSustain aims to improve the accuracy by considering biologically relevant data, quantitative trait loci and marker-trait relationships to build more robust models. Results from the project have already demonstrated improved predictions of FHB resistance in European winter wheat by inclusion of anther extrusion, plant height and days to flowering into the prediction models.”

For more information:

• Read more about the projects on the SusCrop website here