Pre-breeding and population improvement for achieving genetic diversity of breeding germplasms at Dryland Agricultural Research Institute (DARI)
Pre-breeding and population improvement for achieving
genetic diversity of breeding germplasms at Dryland Agricultural Research Institute
(DARI)
Pre-breeding refers to all activities and strategies designed to
identify desirable characteristics or genes from gene bank materials to extend
the genetic diversity of breeding germplasm. Since these martial could not be
used directly in the breeding program because the genes of interest may be
tightly linked to unfavorable genes. Pre-breeding is a bridge between unadapted
materials and a breeding program.
Hundreds of
national and international winter wheat and lentil accessions, landraces,
synthetic derivative lines, wild species have been evaluating at Dryland
Agricultural Research Institute (DARI) every year. For winter wheat, 13 and 48
pre-breeding F1, F2 segregating populations, respectively, are under evaluation
in Maragheh, and 118 pre-breeding F3 populations are in Maragheh and Zanjan in
2020-21. For the pre-breeding winter wheat crossing block, 97 landraces from
Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iran have been planted in the greenhouse in 2020-21
and crosses are in the process to develop pre-breeding lines. Also, 150 winter
wheat landraces are screening for desirable traits under rainfed conditions in
Maragheh. For lentil crop, 200 landraces, collected from cold regions of East
Azerbaijan, are evaluating for desirable traits such as plant height, erect
type, large seed, green hull color, and earliness under rainfed conditions at
DARI in 2020-21. In the lentil crossing block program 47 crosses have been made
and 63 F1 generations were collected.
Because of climate
change and diverse environments of rainfed areas, DARI is designing a very
comprehensive pre-breeding program to explore the valuable genetic diversity of
gene bank material including, landraces, accessions, local varieties, wild
relatives of winter wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea crops. Eventually, to
reduce the time required for cultivar development, the speed breeding program
integrated into the pre-and breeding program which reduces the time by three to
five years.
