Project Details
Projekt
Fortifying and Enhancing Resilience in C4 Crops for Current and Future Climate Change Adversities
Applicant
Dr. Stefan Gerth
Subject Area
Plant Breeding and Plant Pathology
Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Policy, Agricultural Sociology
Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Policy, Agricultural Sociology
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 459445877
The rapid increase of World population and industrial development are giving rise to increased carbon dioxide concentration in the Earth's biosphere. The current climate change scenarios predict warmer and dryer environments, and crops with a C4 photosynthetic pathway will be favored over C3 crops. Therefore the world will heavily rely on C4 crops. While C4 plants constitute only about 3% of all plant species, they account for nearly one fourth of all annual net primary productivity, making them central ecologically. C4FUTURE will study two important C4 cereal crops: maize (Zea mays) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). Maize can be processed into a variety of food, animal feed and industrial products. Sorghum is very attractive for potential gains in animal feed, bioenergy and the manufacture of specialty health-promoting (antioxidant rich) foods. Its popularity is resurging in Europe as a substitute for traditional grains diet and for meeting gluten-free needs.C4FUTURE will develop novel climate resilient ideotypes and breeding technologies to significantly sustain cereal productivity and value chains in Europe. The appropriate measure of productivity growth is Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth (i.e. aggregate quantity of outputs produced by the agricultural sector divided by the aggregate quantity of inputs used to produce those outputs. C4FUTURE will demonstrate about one third productivity increase, which in five-year perspective means more than a double annual growth rate (USDA). This is possible through technologies implemented within the project, and the improved productivity in other cropping systems owing to the technologies transferred from C4FUTURE.C4FUTURE’s other expected Key Performance Indicators include: (i) > two hundreds, each, maize and sorghum genotypes characterized for climate change resilience and fortified nutritional qualities, (ii) two comprehensive atlases of genes, proteins, antioxidants and metabolites expressed in cereals in response to nitrogen and water stress, (iii) identification of hundred stress-adaptive and antioxidant meta-QTL, (iv) novel genomic selection models developed to predict yields and other climate change resilience traits, (v) twenty stress-adaptive and antioxidant alleles/genes identified and validated, (vi) twenty profiles of maize and sorghum ideotypes adapted to projected climatic scenarios, (vii) cutting breeding cycle costs and duration, (viii) novel phenotyping protocols (e.g. capturing root morphology, probing photosynthesis) adaptable in other crop species and (ix) forty prototype lines, of which ten expected to improve maize and sorghum productivity under nitrogen and water stress by 30%.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Turkey
