Climate Crops Centre of Excellence – bringing innovation in sunflower breeding for climate resilience

Abstract

Sunflower breeding and selection are continual processes designed to increase its yield and improve the resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses. Breeders have been successful in producing a large number of varieties using conventional breeding. However, classical breeding methods cannot always provide solutions for tackling frequent and often unpredictable variations in climatic and market conditions. As response to shortcomings of classical breeding, Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops (IFVCNS) established Center of Excellence for Innovations in Breeding of Climate-Resilient Crops – Climate Crops aimed at introduction and application of new techniques such as (epi)genomic selection and genome editing, along with e fficient phenotyping platforms, for more effi cient trait introduction. Climate Crops aims to step up and stimulate excellence and innovation capacity of IFVCNS in sunflower improvement and enhance its ability to respond and create innovative solutions for the challenges that sunflower production, and agriculture as a whole face - climate changes and need to feed the increasing population.