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Description
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.
Summary of project results
The project addressed the challenge of the call related to Technologies and innovation development under the sub-topic Safe and sustainable food systems.
European wheat yields have recently stagnated in major production areas due to various stresses caused by the climate change. This factor is forcing future wheat production from traditional ones to expand towards the Northern regions. Therefore 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 project provided environmentally friendly solutions and identified wheat genotypes, that are resilient to environmentally imposed challenges due to the climate change. In relation to this, low-budget sensors and devices to phenotype were implemented, i.e. characterize plant growth and fitness in field experiments under multiple environmental conditions.
The NOBALwheat project established a spring wheat collection of 300 genotypes originating from the Baltic states and Norway and tested its genetic plasticity and adaptation capacity in 12 diverse environments (3 seasons at 4 countries). The project identified spring wheat genotypes, which have a higher resistance to disease, drought, higher capacity for water use efficiency and nitrogen use efficiency. Newly developed wheat varieties facilitated application reduction of pesticides and fertilizers with an impact on water, soil health and biodiversity.
Three physical project meetings were held in Lithuania (June, 2022), Latvia (June, 2023) and Estonia (November, 2023). The meetings were organized not only to discuss project progress but also to promote knowledge and technology transfer between organizations. PhD students, Postdocs as well as other students from host institutions were encouraged to take part in these meetings to promote further collaboration outside the project. Furthermore, regular online training sessions were held especially during the first project year to fine-tune methodologies among partners and promote know-how transfer from UTMB to Baltic partners especially in UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) imaging and image analysis.
16 PhDs (9M/7F) were involved in the project activities including 5 postdocs. 9 PhD candidates were also supported and had an excellent opportunity to collaborate within the international team.
As a final result, superior nineteen genotypes identified in this study are directly utilized in the breeding process of the climate-fit wheat varieties at partnering institutions to secure yields and ensure sustainable food systems in the Nordic-Baltic region. The project contributed to creation of stable, safe and sustainable food systems nowadays threatened by a changing climate. Possibility to reduce applied fertilizers and pesticides on newly developed wheat genotypes contributed to safer, more nutritious and healthier food production for the society.
Together with that, setting up low-cost high throughput phenotyping platforms and introducing it into breeding programs across the Baltic countries, reduced phenotyping time and increased phenotyping precision. The Nordic-Baltic Plant Phenotyping Network was established to foster future networking and collaboration with NOBALwheat project partners.
During the project all 6 objectives were fully achieved and promising breeding material to develop more climate-ready spring wheat varieties for the Nordic-Baltic region were identified.
4 gold open access publications of premium quality (CA WoS in Q1) were published.
The results of the project were presented in more than 30 international conferences and other events (e. g. summer schools for young researchers, seminars and field days for farmers, presentations for companies, parliaments, etc.), demonstrating the successful inclusion of a wide range of stakeholders.
Summary of bilateral 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.