Plant diseases pose a major threat to global food security. It is strongly predicted that the compounding factors of climate change and variability, newly emerging races of pathogens, and reliance on monocultures will increase the severity of the problem. The ability for Member States to maintain farmer’s livelihoods and to adequately feed their population with nutritious food is at risk. Diseases affect all crops and result in massive yield losses. Traditional breeding methods are limited by narrow gene pools, and by the long time required to develop new varieties. Induced mutations offer a safe, proven and acceptable alternative route to increase the efficiency of producing crops with enhanced resistance to biotic stress. For example a search of the Mutant Variety Database (mvgs.iaea.org) shows 696 varieties when "disease" is used as a search term, and 132 varieties when "rust" is used as a keyword. Most are cereals. While progress is being made in mutation breeding of cereals owing to their ease of fertilization, excellent genetic resources and large network of researchers, less has been achieved with vegetatively propagated and perennial crops. In large part this is due to bottlenecks in mutation induction and screening. This CRP will focus on the development of technology packages to enhance the efficiency of generation and screening mutant populations of crop species for the improved resistance to plant diseases. Vegetatively propagated banana and the polyploid perennial arabica coffee are examples of target species where major improvements are needed to overcome existing bottlenecks . Activities will also include methods of mutant characterization to facilitate breeding and transfer of adapted varieties to farmers.
To provide tools and improved germplasm of coffee and banana to mitigate the effect of climate change driven crop disease outbreaks to enable sustainable food security and enhanced livelihoods in Member States.
To address identified bottlenecks through development, optimization and validation of technology packages for efficient production and screening of mutant populations for disease resistance and through supportive approaches.
1. New and innovative technology packages scientific advancement for improved mutation induction and screening of coffee and banana; transferable to other vegetative crops and trees
2. Technology dissemination outreach
- Two protocol books two training course manuals
- 5 journal articles published (Oct 2020); conference proceedings abstracts
- 3 FAO/IAEA success stories with additional interviews/social media outreach
3. Human and institutional capacity building
- Ca 5 fellows, 3 PhD, 3 MSc students trained (COS, CPR, AUS, PBGL)
- Group training course ‘Mutation induction in coffee’, jointly organized and implemented by PBGL and BOKU University, Austria (3-14 October 2016)
4. Mutant germplasm:
- New coffee and banana mutant resources developed by Member States, in case of coffee, this is the first collective effort to develop mutant resources
- One TR4 resistant banana released
o Coffee is the most important agricultural product in international trade; Leaf Rust re-emerged in Central America in 2011-2012 and by 2017 70% of farms affected; 1,7 M jobs lost and 3.2 billion USD lost income
o The Banana Fusarium Wilt TR4 disease is already present in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Australia. The disease has spread to South America (Colombia) for the first time in 2019. Latin America is world’s most important banana exporting region.