NOBALwheat – breeding toolbox for sustainable food system of the NOrdic BALtic region

About this project

<p><span style="background-color: #F2F7F6; color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px">Bread wheat accounts for nearly 50% of European cereal production. However, European crop yields have stagnated in major production areas due to abiotic and biotic stresses caused by climate change. Global wheat production is predicted to expand towards the Northern regions. Breeding climate-resilient wheat varieties is an important research task for the Baltic and Nordic countries to ensure safe and sustainable food systems. The NOBALwheat aims to establish a spring wheat collection originating from Baltic states and Norway and test it’s genetic plasticity and adaptation capacity to the climate change for different countries by phenotyping over three years and genotyping it. Superior genotypes will be directly introduced into breeding programs for the development of disease- and abiotic stress-resistant varieties. In combination with genotypic data, NOBAL wheat collection will provide highly valuable material for use as a training population and this will be a starting point to introduce genomic selection into breeding programs across Baltic countries. Setting up low-cost high throughput phenotyping platforms and introducing these into breeding programs across the Baltic countries will increase food security in the Nordic-Baltic region. Identification of vegetation indices and morphological traits for wheat plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses, will allow to utilize it in precision agriculture with the goal of optimizing returns on inputs while preserving resources. All partners will benefit from know-how and technology transfer and will make use of the climate-fit wheat varieties to secure yields and ensure sustainable food systems, and will profit from the advanced field sensing technology which is an important part of digitalization in future agriculture.</span></p>

Bilateral cooperation results

From the very beginning of the project all partners clearly expressed their willingness to improve their expertise in advanced breeding methods such as remote sensing and genomic characterization of breeding material. All three Baltic states run public breeding programmes for spring wheat therefore such an expertise could be readily implemented into ongoing crop improvement to meet challenging uncertainties of the future climate in the region. NMBU (partner from the donor country) had relevant expertise in both remote sensing and genomic characterization know-how with prior application in plant breeding and was therefore an excellent fit for this project. Active exchange of plant material and traditional phenotyping know-how between partners promoted a better understanding of region’s complexity regarding wheat cultivation and grain production. Genotypes with wide regional adaptation were further employed by the partners to develop superior cultivars for sustainable grain production in Northern Europe. One of the best experiences from this project was the efficient communication among project participants, e.g. equipment failure in mid-season were easily solved simply by asking for possible solutions within project group which was much faster than getting response from official equipment dealer. The first year was slightly hampered by the COVID-19 pandemics and travel restrictions. Therefore multiple online project meetings were held to fine-tune the experimental setup of the project. The first physical meeting was held in Lithuania in 2022, while two more visits to the partner institutions in Latvia and Estonia were carried in 2023. These meetings were open to all project participants including PhD and other students. During the last project meeting in Tartu (Estonia) all project participants expressed their willingness to continue collaboration after the end of the project. Partners were looking for relevant funding calls to maintain the network established.

Project partners

• Norwegian University of Life Sciences Donor project partner· Norway
• Institute of Agricultural Resources and Economics Project partner· Latvia
• Estonian Crop Research Institute Project partner· Estonia
• University of Tartu Project partner· Estonia