An American university has received a $24 million grant to mitigate climate-related threats to global wheat production.
Cornell University will use the grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to expand re-search efforts that address climate-induced threats to wheat production, such as disease, drought and heat stress.
Researchers at Cornell and collaborating institutions will develop new lines of wheat with improved heat tolerance and resistance to prevalent wheat diseases, including a potentially costly rust strain known as Ug99.
“Over the last eight years, we have built a global consortium of wheat scientists and farmers whose efforts have so far prevented the global epidemics of Ug99 stem rust predicted back in 2005,” said Ronnie Coffman, a plant breeder and international program director at Cornell in Ithaca, New York.
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“In the new grant — delivering genetic gain to wheat — we will use modern tools of comparative genomics … to develop and deploy varieties of wheat that incorporate climate resiliency as well as improved disease resistance.”
The new varieties will be particularly applicable to small farmers in politically vulnerable areas of Africa and the Middle East, where food security, conflict, pathogen migration and climate change are ongoing concerns.
The four-year grant was an-nounced March 16 at the International Maize and Wheat Improve-ment Center’s Ciudad Obregon Research Station in Mexico during a meeting of the world’s leading wheat experts.
The centre, also known as CIMMYT, is one of the world’s leading research institutions involved in wheat research.
Experts were meeting in Mexico to review new technologies that can be used to control the spread of wheat pathogens and develop new wheat varieties.
The grant will build on recent successes of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BRGI), which was also aimed at mitigating production losses related to stem rust, yellow rust and other prevalent wheat pathogens.
The BRGI program was led by the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project, which also received funding from the Gates Foundation from 2008-16.
The new program will be based at Cornell but also involve scientists and collaborators in Kenya and Ethiopia as well as wheat experts at CIMMYT and the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas.
Leading wheat researchers and lab facilities in the United States, Canada, China, Turkey, Denmark, Australia and South Africa will also contribute to the project.
More than 2,000 scientists from 35 international institutions and 23 countries are involved in the work.
Data contributions to the program’s international surveillance network have come from 37 countries.
“Sustainable cropping systems that are economically viable, socially acceptable and respectful of the environment are critical to ensure global food security,” said Hans Braun, director of CIMMYT’s global wheat program.
Braun said wheat provides 20 percent of all calories and 20 percent of all protein to people in developed and developing countries.
