Multi-target crop breeding for climate resilience & enhanced nutrition

Crop breeding has - for many decades - been focused on increasing yield under high input agriculture, with a key focus on rice, maize and wheat which now contribute nearly 60 percent of calories and proteins obtained by humans from plants. This has led to less resilient varieties of these staple crops and with lower overall nutrient content. “Stacked” germplasm improvements for priority staple crops has an enormous potential to incorporate both climate resilience traits as well as an improved nutrient content. This innovation focuses on using advanced plant breeding technologies to fast track the high yield traits in existing varieties, as well as the re-domestication of key crops with high resilience and higher nutrient content.