Unlocking genetic variation for climate adaptation of crops

There is currently a pressing need to adapt crops to future climates by breeding drought- and heat-resilient varieties.

Wild crop relatives harbor untapped genetic variation for breeding but remain underutilized due to the lack of efficient methods to identify beneficial variants in collections.

Population genetic methods that identify genetic variants associated with environmental variation could efficiently identify adaptive genetic variation for crop improvement in collections of crop wild relatives.

Here, we will assess the utility of such an approach in a proof-of-concept project focusing on wild relatives of wheat and flax, which are promising sources of genetic variation for climate adaptation.

We will focus on genetic variation for drought tolerance, as these crops are grown in regions where drought will be more frequent in the future due to climate change.

We will first identify drought tolerance loci and drought adapted accessions using population genetic environmental association analyses, and then validate our findings experimentally. This will result in validated markers of direct utility for developing improved varieties.

The results of the project are broadly important for more efficient utilization of crop wild relative collections to unlock wild genetic variation for food security and fibre production in a changing climate.