AAFC IWYP Aligned Call: Increasing Wheat Yield with Multi-omics

从1991年到2012年，全球小麦产量平均每年增长1.14%。然而，考虑到粮农组织的预测表明，2050年世界人口将超过90亿，这种基本粮食的渐进发展需要大幅改善。作为提高小麦产量努力的一部分，国际小麦产量伙伴关系的目标是在未来20年内将小麦产量提高50%。全球小麦育种工作的两个主要参与者是加拿大和英国，这两个国家的研究机构正在努力实现这一目标。人们认识到，这不仅需要发展新的想法和创新方法，以发现新的等位基因和性状，这些等位基因和性状是产量增加的基础，而且还需要专门的育种工作，将这些性状纳入精英遗传背景。产量的增加直到它们作为成品品种交付到种植者手中才得以实现。由传统的表型选择驱动的小麦育种计划积累了有利的等位基因，并开发了在特定目标环境中产生高产和稳定产量的品种。在小麦育种中，开发具有非常特定的最终用途质量目标的品种的必要性增加了将育种工作限制在精英对精英杂交的趋势，这因此导致遗传背景的缩小。除了抗病等位基因，这往往是专门针对新品种的发展，相对较少的努力，通常是招致扩大遗传多样性的育种计划，以发现利用不足或新的等位基因的农艺性能和产量。该项目旨在共享具有一定产量潜力的种质资源，并在不同小麦生长环境下进行杂交试验。通过在不同育种计划之间共享遗传改良，可以为春小麦和冬小麦新品种的增产奠定基础。小麦产量的提高可以为小麦生产者提供可观的投资回报。例如，加拿大小麦产量增加5%将为加拿大经济带来约3亿加元（$CDN）的农场价值。

Wheat yield gains have averaged an annualized 1.14% increase worldwide from 1991 to 2012. However, considering FAO projections that indicate the world population will exceed 9 billion in 2050, this incremental development in a basic foodstuff needs to improve dramatically. As part of the effort to improve wheat yields the International Wheat Yield Partnership has the goal of increasing wheat yields by 50% in the next 20 years. Two key protagonists in this global wheat breeding effort are Canada and the UK where research institutions are working to achieve this goal.It is recognised that this will require not only the development of new ideas and innovative approaches to discover new alleles and traits that underlie yield gains, but also dedicated breeding efforts to incorporate the traits into elite genetic backgrounds. Yield gains are not realized until they are delivered as finished cultivars into the hands of growers. Wheat breeding programmes driven by traditional, phenotypic, selection accumulate favourable alleles and develop cultivars that result in high and stable yield in the given target environment. In wheat breeding, the necessity to develop cultivars with very specific end use quality targets increases the tendency to limit breeding work to elite-by-elite crossing, which consequently leads to a narrowing of the genetic background. Except for disease resistance alleles, which are often specifically targeted for the development of new cultivars, relatively little effort is typically incurred to broaden the genetic diversity of breeding programmes in order to discover under-utilized or novel alleles for agronomic performance and yield. This project proposes to share germplasm with a range of yield potentials and test cross diverse wheat growing environments.By sharing genetic improvements between diverse breeding programmes, a foundation for the delivery of increased wheat yield in the form of new spring and winter wheat cultivars can be laid. Improvements in wheat yields can provide considerable return on investment for wheat producers. For example, a 5% increase in Canadian wheat production would have a farm gate value of approximately $300 million dollars ($CDN) for the Canadian economy.