The Way Forward for the PPP

As in other parts of the world, Nordic agriculture faces great challenges in adapting to climate change. The future may bring more of dry spring weather with early drought, warmer summers causing heat stress and wet autumns with pests and diseases to follow. The next generations of farmers will most likely require a much wider spectrum of plant varieties adapted to more demanding cultivation conditions. Food security is a basic need and the Covid 19-pandemic has also taught us not to take a functioning import and export market for granted and the issue of a higher degree of selfsufficiency has once again been raised.

 

Plant breeding is a long term process and to succeed in this context, the need for a strong and effective collaboration between public and private plant breeding entities in the Nordic countries is obvious.

 

This publication has presented four PPP projects active during the program period 2018 to 2020 and we have learned about several important achievements. The work within the PPP-collaboration is going in the right direction but we need to do much more in the future.

 

Below you find short summaries about the projects that received funding for the years 2021 to 2023.

The new PPP NORDFRUIT Apple project aims at completing previous PPP efforts in apple. In this project the main focus is to carry out supplementary phenotyping, as the crop was very low due to flower frost in 2020, and more data is needed.

The project focuses on the facilitation for implementation of new technologies into the Nordic apple breeding programs. Considerable efforts have been made in tree and fruit storage diseases, however results need to be confirmed in order to capitalize the investements, and that is the main tasks of the one-year project.

The forthcoming 6P3 project will focus on operationalization of technologies and methods developed during the previous two project phases. Phenotypic data will be combined with a plant-soil-climate model to understand interactions between genotypes, local environments, climate and management.

 

The aim will be to provide Nordic plant breeders with the latest UAV and imaging technologies, efficient data management tools, and a climate and stress response model to predict and breed genotypes suitable to the inevitable changing climate and environmental conditions.

The PPP Nordic potato cultivar development project brings three Nordic potato breeding programs and key public scientists to use available germplasm along with new tools for breeding potatoes with resistance to late blight and skin blemish diseases. The project includes four interacting research work packages along with two for management and dissemination.

 

Main outputs will be bred germplasm together with new methods and tools to continue improving potatoes for Nordic Europe, as well as establishing a Stakeholder Forum involving potato value chain actors who will influence the project throughout.

Spring wheat is currently cultivated at the northernmost limit for the crop where it faces several challenges linked to climate change. The CResWheat project aims to increase the spring wheat yield potential and self-sufficiency in the Nordic region. This requires extensive pre-breeding activities and collaboration between breeders and researchers across borders.

 

The project focuses on the identification of germplasm, genes, and genetic markers associated with disease resistance pre-harvest sprouting, and early maturity. Special attention will be paid to drought tolerance and diseases expected to be of future relevance to spring wheat in northern Europe.

These projects within the framework of the PPP for Pre-breeding will be implemented through the joint efforts of the Nordic plant breeding companies, the universities, NordGen and by the financing of the governments of the Nordic countries. Together we can face the future.

 

/The PPP-Secretariat at NordGen