Dataset Information

Food system actor perspectives on future-proofing European food systems through plant breeding.

ABSTRACT: Crop improvement is a key innovation area in the pursuit of sustainable food systems. However, realising its potential requires integration of the needs and priorities of all agri-food chain stakeholders. In this study, we provide a multi-stakeholder perspective on the role of crop improvement in future-proofing the European food system. We engaged agri-business, farm- and consumer-level stakeholders, and plant scientists through an online survey and focus groups. Four of each group's top five priorities were shared and related to environmental sustainability goals (water, nitrogen and phosphorus efficiency, and heat stress). Consensus was identified on issues including considering existing alternatives to plant breeding (e.g. management strategies), minimising trade-offs, and addressing geographical variation in needs. We conducted a rapid evidence synthesis on the impacts of priority crop improvement options, highlighting the urgent need for further research examining downstream sustainability impacts to identify concrete targets for plant breeding innovation as a food systems solution.

SUBMITTER: Stetkiewicz S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10069723 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Food system actor perspectives on future-proofing European food systems through plant breeding.

Stetkiewicz S S Menary J J Nair A A Rufino M M Fischer A R H ARH Cornelissen M M Guichaoua A A Jorasch P P Lemarié S S Nanda A K AK Wilhelm R R Davies J A C JAC

Scientific reports 20230403 1

Crop improvement is a key innovation area in the pursuit of sustainable food systems. However, realising its potential requires integration of the needs and priorities of all agri-food chain stakeholders. In this study, we provide a multi-stakeholder perspective on the role of crop improvement in future-proofing the European food system. We engaged agri-business, farm- and consumer-level stakeholders, and plant scientists through an online survey and focus groups. Four of each group's top five p ...[more]

PMID: 37012265

Similar Datasets

Project description:Food legumes are important for defeating malnutrition and sustaining agri-food systems globally. Breeding efforts in legume crops have been largely confined to the exploitation of genetic variation available within the primary genepool, resulting in narrow genetic base. Introgression as a breeding scheme has been remarkably successful for an array of inheritance and molecular studies in food legumes. Crop wild relatives (CWRs), landraces, and exotic germplasm offer great potential for introgression of novel variation not only to widen the genetic base of the elite genepool for continuous incremental gains over breeding cycles but also to discover the cryptic genetic variation hitherto unexpressed. CWRs also harbor positive quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for improving agronomic traits. However, for transferring polygenic traits, "specialized population concept" has been advocated for transferring QTLs from CWR into elite backgrounds. Recently, introgression breeding has been successful in developing improved cultivars in chickpea (Cicer arietinum), pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), lentil (Lens culinaris), mungbean (Vigna radiata), urdbean (Vigna mungo), and common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Successful examples indicated that the usable genetic variation could be exploited by unleashing new gene recombination and hidden variability even in late filial generations. In mungbean alone, distant hybridization has been deployed to develop seven improved commercial cultivars, whereas in urdbean, three such cultivars have been reported. Similarly, in chickpea, three superior cultivars have been developed from crosses between C. arietinum and Cicer reticulatum. Pigeonpea has benefited the most where different cytoplasmic male sterility genes have been transferred from CWRs, whereas a number of disease-resistant germplasm have also been developed in Phaseolus. As vertical gene transfer has resulted in most of the useful gene introgressions of practical importance in food legumes, the horizontal gene transfer through transgenic technology, somatic hybridization, and, more recently, intragenesis also offer promise. The gains through introgression breeding are significant and underline the need of bringing it in the purview of mainstream breeding while deploying tools and techniques to increase the recombination rate in wide crosses and reduce the linkage drag. The resurgence of interest in introgression breeding needs to be capitalized for development of commercial food legume cultivars.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Despite the importance of the Galápagos Islands for the development of central concepts in ecology and evolution, the understanding of many ecological processes in this archipelago is still very basic. One such process is pollination, which provides an important service to both plants and their pollinators. The rather modest level of knowledge on this subject has so far limited our predictive power on the consequences of the increasing threat of introduced plants and pollinators to this unique archipelago. SCOPE:As a first step toward building a unified view of the state of pollination in the Galápagos, a thorough literature search was conducted on the breeding systems of the archipelago's flora and compiled all documented flower-visitor interactions. Based on 38 studies from the last 100 years, we retrieved 329 unique interactions between 123 flowering plant species (50 endemics, 39 non-endemic natives, 26 introduced and eight of unknown origin) from 41 families and 120 animal species from 13 orders. We discuss the emergent patterns and identify promising research avenues in the field. CONCLUSIONS:Although breeding systems are known for <20 % of the flora, most species in our database were self-compatible. Moreover, the incidence of autogamy among endemics, non-endemic natives and alien species did not differ significantly, being high in all groups, which suggests that a poor pollinator fauna does not represent a constraint to the integration of new plant species into the native communities. Most interactions detected (approx. 90 %) come from a single island (most of them from Santa Cruz). Hymenopterans (mainly the endemic carpenter bee Xylocopa darwinii and ants), followed by lepidopterans, were the most important flower visitors. Dipterans were much more important flower visitors in the humid zone than in the dry zone. Bird and lizard pollination has been occasionally reported in the dry zone. Strong biases were detected in the sampling effort dedicated to different islands, time of day, focal plants and functional groups of visitors. Thus, the existing patterns need to be confronted with new and less biased data. The implementation of a community-level approach could greatly increase our understanding of pollination on the islands and our ability to predict the consequences of plant invasions for the natural ecosystems of the Galápagos.

Dataset Information

Food system actor perspectives on future-proofing European food systems through plant breeding.

Publications

Food system actor perspectives on future-proofing European food systems through plant breeding.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets