engleski

Forage legumes breeding strategies for adaptation on the future environment challenges

Global climate change is resulting in extreme temperature (high or low) situations in different regions of the world, which affected in new growth conditions for forage crops production. Furthermore, increasing pressure to farmers to adopt more sustainable agricultural practices requires new approaches in breeding forage legumes. New environmental conditions and turning towards sustainable agriculture has compelled forage breeders and breeders of other agricultural crops to develop climate change resilient cultivars, which can withstand broad spectrum stresses such as drought, heat, cold, salinity, flood, submergence and pests, thus helping to insure stability and increase production. Alfalfa and red clover are the main perennial legumes in most European regions. Understanding genetic and physiological basis of these crops for adaptation in the future climate challenges is one of the most important objectives of forage breeding programs. Forage crops breeding to environment challenges involves several key activities: (i) create new and better adapted cultivars by identifying and improving useful traits such as winter survival, thermal tolerance of photosynthesis, resistance to waterloggingand, autumn dormancy range, fungal disease resistance that are expected to be even more important in future due to changes in temperature and humidity, (ii) use available genetic variation within natural gene pools (local ecotypes, landraces and cultivars) and / or wild adapted genetic resources and exotic germplasm for crossing and pre-breeding to increase favourable loci and resilience in the elite breeding populations, (iii) increase persistency under severe drought conditions, (iv) encourage the use of legume species in pure or mixed stands (mixtures of alfalfa and grass species may help to regulate forage production during the year and to reduce the disequilibrium between spring and summer production), (v) integrate marker assisted selection (MAS) and genomic selection into practical breeding programmes. Genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) data and other genomic investigations identified QTL regions influencing various traits in alfalfa such as aluminium tolerance, drought tolerance, salt tolerance, freezing tolerance, and biomass yield under drought stress. In red clover two studies have identified quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for traits related to persistence in red clover. The latest research identified candidate genes for further analysis of the genetic basis of drought tolerance in red clover. The impact of climate change on crops resistance is difficult to predict and is likely to be variable depending on the crop and environment. Genomics-assisted breeding is considered to have the greatest potential for overcoming challenges and ensuring a sustainable increase of food production by adapting available crops to biotic and abiotic stresses and breeding novel crop cultivars.

Forage Crops ; Breeding ; Climate Change ; Genomic Selection

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