Project 10: Plant breeding - central Asia
Department of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology
Popular summary
Department of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology has since 2008 a collaboration with two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and Kyrgystan. The collaboration has mainly focused on capacity building by educating MSc, Licentiate and PhD students and was a part of a comprehensive program, supporting the seed industry development in these countries (terminated in December, 2010).
To enable long-term food safety and security within the region with a quickly growing population, there is a need for reorganization of the Central Asian agriculture as well as for development of new high-yielding cultivars with high levels of resistance. The aim of this project is to educate a new generation of plant breeders and strengthen their international networks. We are collaborating with the Tajik Agrarian University (TAU), Kyrgyz Agrarian University (KAU), and two CGIAR centres operating in the region, ICARDA and CIMMYT (station in Njoro, Kenya). We work with the resistance to rust diseases in wheat, especially resistance to the most dangerous race, UG99. We have an excessive collection of wheat plant material with wheat-rye translocations (when parts of rye chromosomes are translocated to wheat), where we earlier have identified new disease resistances.
The main parts of the project:
- Two Tajik students will get possibility to proceed with PhLic education instead of graduating as MSc
- A post-doc is working with resistance to UG99 in cooperation with TAU, KAU and ICARDA
- A female student from Kyrgyzstan has been offered the possibility to get part of her education in Sweden
Expected outputs are:
The cooperation between Sweden and Central Asia within the research area of plant breeding for increased yield and food quality to ensure food security and safety will be increased. This will be done through continued capacity building in terms of education of students but also by more direct plant breeding oriented activities with the aim of increasing yield and quality of the crops involved in the projects (wheat and pulses). Furthermore, the project will generate scientific outputs for the involved persons and institutions as scientific publications are a must within higher education. Outreach within the project will take form through meetings/conferences in which students will participate together with invited farmers, ministries and local plant breeders/breeding companies.