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Plant breeding has been remarkably successful in developing high-yielding crop cultivars that have helped to sustain global food production over the last century. For instance, in the United States, the yield of the hybrid corn was increased 3 times, from 4 tons per hectare in the 1960s to 12 tons per hectare in 2017. By selecting and crossing plants with desirable traits, breeders have created crops that are more productive and adapted to intensive agriculture. However, this success has come with a trade-off: breeding has relied on genetic variation within a very limited primary gene pool, which has been shrinking due to genetic bottlenecks caused by domestication and intensive selection. As a result, today’s crops have lost much of their natural genetic diversity, making further improvement increasingly difficult.

Response Doctoral Program

Since the domestication of wheat about 7,500 years ago, this important crop has undergone significant changes (de Sousa et al. 2021). Through targeted breeding, high-yielding wheat varieties have been developed to feed the growing global population, but this comes at the cost of reduced genetic diversity (Balfourier et al. 2019).

Response Doctoral Program

From the Burren in Ireland and the Erins in France to the Alps in Switzerland, grasslands are vital ecosystems that play a crucial role in supporting biodiversity, providing ecosystem services, and ensuring food security. These vast and diverse grasslands are just a few of the many that cover around 17% of the European Union’s total surface area, as of 2018 (EUROSTAT 2021). Grasslands are among the most species-rich habitats on Earth (Petermann and Buzhdygan), home to a wide variety of flora and fauna, and are essential breeding grounds for birds and invertebrates. In addition, they provide numerous ecosystem services such as water purification, soil erosion prevention and carbon sequestration. Grasslands contain various species of forage grasses, crucial for feeding livestock. Forage grasses, such as Lolium spp. and Festuca spp. are valuable, environment-friendly sources of livestock feed. However, frequent and unpredictable droughts have threatened forage grass yields, posing significant challenges to farmers and livestock managers.

Response Doctoral Program

Im Rahmen der Doktorarbeit von Fabian Hess (ETH Zürich) zum Thema «Erschliessung genetischer Ressourcen von Buchweizen zur Diversifizierung der Schweizer Landwirtschafts- und Ernährungssysteme», die u.a. von ProSpecieRara mitbetreut wird, fand im August 2023 ein erster “Fachtag Buchweizen” statt.

Am Fachtag hat sich eine äusserst vielfältige Gruppe zusammengefunden, um sich gemeinsam vertieft mit dem Buchweizen auseinanderzusetzen und über die Chancen und Herausforderungen entlang der Wertschöpfungskette zu diskutieren.

Dieser sehr erfolgreiche Fachtag ist Teil des aktuellen und zukünftigen Engagement von ProSpecieRara, die Buchweizenvielfalt für die Praxis nutzbar zu machen.

Der umfassende Online-Artikel zum Fachtag befindet sich hier.

Diese Veranstaltung wurde geleitet von Fabian Hess (Doktorand an der ETH Zürich). Fabian Hess ist Stipendiat im Doktorandenprogramm RESPONSE (DP) ” RESPONSE – to society and policy needs through plant, food and energy sciences”, das durch das Forschungs- und Innovationsprogramm Horizon 2020 der Europäischen Union finanziert wird. Dies geschieht im Rahmen des Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-Fördervertrags Nr. 847585.

Die Fotos wurden zur Verfügung gestellt von ProSpeciaRara und Michelle Nay (Agroscope).