Agritech - Spoke 1 - Deliverable 1.3.1 - Improved genotypes /varieties / breeds / microbial strains

This task aimed to develop genetically improved material and more efficient breeding strategies for a range of agronomically important crops. It produced candidate varieties of durum wheat with increased resistance to drought or biotic stresses; bread wheat and rice with increased resistance to diseases; barley adapted to agrivoltaic systems; and lucerne adapted to dairy systems and the industry of dehydrated forages. It developed innovative selection strategies for durum and bread wheat based on marker-assisted selection (MAS) or chromosome engineering (aimed at drought tolerance, disease resistance and/or grain quality improvement); barley based on genomic selection (aimed at grain quality and yield improvement); rice based on MAS (aimed at disease resistance); lucerne based on genomic selection (mainly aimed at forage quality improvement); tomato based on genome editing and phenomics (aimed at increasing drought or salinity tolerance); and pear, apple, peach, and grapevine based on MAS or genomic selection (aimed at improving the resistance to biotic stresses, yield, and fruit quality). Supporting actions for future breeding also derived from the development of a collection of mutants for common bean, a genome assembly for two minor crops, and the implementation of the Doubled-haploid technique in commercial breeding programs. Concurrent evaluation activities confirmed the interest of wheat material with new quality traits (e.g., high amylose) for specific product chains, and identified top-performing traditional populations of broccoli rabe and vegetable melon. Overall, the work on major crops responded to the needs of improving the durability of resistance against rapidly evolving pathogens, adapting to the climate change, and producing cultivars with quality traits of increasing interest from a market and/or an industrial standpoint. Research work on domestic animals and micro-organisms was more limited; its major achievement was the development of genomic selection procedures for disease resistance, feed efficiency, and behavioral traits in pig, with less extensive work performed on cattle.