Contributions

Technology delivery systems. In most GLDC countries, limited capacity to produce early generations of seed, weak market incentives and inadequate quality assurance compound weak seed delivery systems. Thus a combination of informal and formal seed systems is needed to improve access to modern varieties⁸.

FP4 will deliver new productivity enhancing varieties and hybrids that integrate with FP3 for delivery of management options. These varieties, among others, will be widely adapted to diverse agroecologies, the goal being to unlock opportunities for grain aggregation and fodder production from smallholder production systems. Such a process will encourage a shift towards popularly traded varieties, with a medium-to long-term consequence of losing genetic diversity and its attendant food and nutrition security challenges. In order to minimize genetic erosion, a diverse array of breeding materials will be developed and progressively deployed as informed by scaling and delivery studies of FP4 and FP1-FP3. FP4 and FP5 will leverage the Genebank platform to manage germplasm and variety deployment to mitigate genetic erosion. Leveraging the comparative strength of local access from ICRISAT Regional Genebanks (Kenya, Niger, Zimbabwe) will be particularly important for FP4 and FP5.

FP4.6 Clusters of Activities (CoA)

CoA 4.1: Environmental characterization and phenotyping

This cluster of activity is organized around two interrelated pillars: (i) analysis of the target population of environment (TPE); and (ii) establishment of phenotyping tools for assessing breeding priorities and traits. These pillars map to Module 4 of the CGIAR EiB.