Exploiting cereal biodiversity in nutrient use and biological interactions in crop resilience breeding 

wheat and oat, roots, plant microbiome, stress resilience, germplasm resources

36 months, , starting from July 1st 2025

Technology Readiness Level (TRL): 3-5

Introduction

The CerealBio ambition is to enhance wheats and oats resilience to environmental stresses within the context of agrochemical limitations and climate challenges, ultimately contributing to climate change mitigation. For this goal, CerealBio will set a new plant ideotype that integrates standard traits for yield performance with valuable novel traits, recovered from Genetic Resources, that govern interactions with the environment and the field ecosystem, to exploit benefits arising from synergies among its biological components. In the long term, CerealBio will contribute to increasing and strengthening the sustainability of cereal farming.

CerealBio aims to demonstrate that the exploitation of wheat and oat biodiversity and associated ecosystem interactions can benefit their sustainability. The project evidence-based hypothesis is that crop performance and sustainability can be achieved by breeding for plant traits beneficial to establish synergies within the growing ecosystem, which includes soil resources, the above and below-ground microbiota, and the community of other crop plants. Availability of such beneficial traits is ensured by the wide untapped genetic diversity of the crop germplasm.

Agrochemical limitations and climate change effects are an exciting opportunity to rethink European wheat-oat production practices and achieve food security and sustainability through innovative, knowledge-based breeding and management strategies. Harnessing agro-biodiversity already demonstrated the potential to support the needed agriculture innovation.

CerealBio tackles the sustainability of the major EU cereal, the bread wheat, and the regionally important cereals durum wheat and oats through a multi-actor approach including research partners and stakeholders representing renowned scientists, farmer associations, breeding companies, agro-chemical and biologicals industries from Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Italy but also UK and France.

Background

Thus far, cereals have not been bred for resilience, the focus to date being on high yields under intensive agricultural practices. Hence, current varieties are highly dependent on high doses of chemical fertilizers to boost yield, and fungicides to protect from harmful pathogens, such as Fusarium. However, climate changes and reduced chemical usage due to European regulations (EU Green Deal) increasingly expose crops to multi-stress conditions, including those associated with low nutrient inputs and pathogen attacks, often under unpredictable and highly impacting environmental conditions. Guaranteeing yield, quality, and safety of cereal crops means we have to increasingly rely on the innate resilience of crop species to withstand environmental pressures.

Main project activities

CerealBio's specific objectives include:

  • addressing wheat-oat diversity in root phenotypes to define the root ideotype (architecture plasticity and functions),

  • exploring wheat-oat diversity to identify new sources of plant durable resistance to Fusarium and Septoria

  • exploring the plant-to-plant interactions to discover the genetic bases of neighbour-modulated susceptibility in cereal

  • dissecting plant-microbiota interactions to give foundation to a breeding for healthy microbiome and to improve the control of cereal diseases with robust biological agents,

  • quantifying relationships among productivity, environment and the targeted plant traits under real field conditions with multi-stress and management regimes less reliant on agrochemicals,

  • assessing consequences of the project technologies and scientific developments on the economic system, through cases studies.

Expected social impact

CerealBio deliverables will contribute to innovate the wheat-oat breeding/variety development and agronomic management strategies with the widest social impact of reducing the agriculture carbon footprint and mitigating climate change. CerealBio will translate the knowledge acquired in innovations validated in relevant agronomic contexts and assessed for the economic sustainability. Innovations will consist in novel resources (traits, varieties) and technologies (diagnostic molecular markers/biomarkers/phenotyping screening methodologies) to support breeding programs for increased crop sustainability. Additionally, management practices effectively incorporating sustainable biological solutions to enrich the plant microbiome with additional plant biocontrol and biostimulation effects will be brought to agronomists, extension services, technicians and farmers.

Implementation and plans to reach target groups

A few industries offered an in-kind contribution to CerealBio, others expressed their interest in participating in CerealBio dissemination events/Stakeholder Committe to be informed on advancing research and innovation in the field of sustainable agriculture. Some partners maintain extensive collaboration with cereal industries to transfer genomic knowledge and expertise into commercial varieties. To ensure impact, CerelBio develops the following targeted dissemination actions on the project and its outcomes:

Toward industries partners (breeding and biologicals/agrochemical companies, associations):

- special sessions within the annual project meetings for update on project progress, co-direct its evolution and assess outputs

- demonstrator showcases field trials in last year's project and across EU latitudes (Ireland, Germany, Italy)

- joint breeders/biological industries national workshops

Toward the scientific community of wheat-oat production chain: the standard means of scientific dissemination: presentations of results to congress, gold open access peer-reviewed scientific publications, and data sharing on public repositories (Graingenes, Eurisco), in compliance with the FAIR principle.

Toward decision makers for research-informed policies: based on acquired knowledge a position document listing wheat research priorities to support policy briefs of the Wheat Initiative, ultimately to inform international funding agencies on priorities and opportunities of wheat research. To enhance research project networking and ultimately to impact decision makers the coordinator will attend the GEH mid/end term meetings.

To communicate the project and enhance public awareness on societal/economic/environmental challenges related to CerealBio topics, a range of communications actions tailored on audience and needed messages are planned: project accounts on the most common social media, specific stands at institutional open, free leaflets and brochures, promotional YouTube podcasts in regional languages on the importance of cereal and microbial biodiversity, the project Website... Targets will be students, representative of the social parties, citizens, policy makers.

Related costs (open access, conference attendance, printing promotional material, workshop organization, etc are covered by the Project budget, and all partners ensure proper reference to the GEH and WI in any documentation published (in written, oral or electronic form).

Partners of the project

  • Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA) - Research Centre for Genomics and Bioinformatics, Italy

    Elisabetta Mazzucotelli

    • University College Dublin, Ireland - Fiona Doohan

    • Julius Kühn Institute-Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Germany - Andreas Stahl

    • University of Bologna, Italy - Marco Maccaferri

    • Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Germany - Kerstin Neumann

    • Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium - Xavier Draye

    • University of Galway, Ireland - Cathal Odonoghue

    • Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden - Salim Bourras

    • CropBiome, Ireland - Sean Daly

    • CILL ULTA, Ireland - Eithne Nic Lochlainn