China-CIMMYT collaboration enhances wheat improvement in China

Abstract

China and CIMMYT have collaborated on wheat improvement for over 40 years and significant progress has been achieved in five aspects in China. A standardized protocol for testing Chinese noodle quality has been established with three selection criteria, i.e., gluten quality, starch viscosity and flour color are identified as being responsible for noodle quality. Genomic approaches have been used to develop and validate gene-specific markers, leading to the establishment of a KASP platform, and seven cultivars have been released through application of molecular marker technology. Methodology for breeding adult-plant resistance to yellow rust, leaf rust and powdery mildew, based on the pleiotropic effect of minor genes has been established, resulting in release of six cultivars. More than 330 cultivars derived from CIMMYT germplasm have been released and are now grown over 9% of the Chinese wheat production area. Additionally, physiological approaches have been used to characterize yield potential and develop high-efficiency phenotyping platforms. CIMMYT has also provided valuable training for Chinese scientists. Development of climate-resilient cultivars with application of new technology will be the priority for future collaboration.

Keywords

adult-plant resistance / bread wheat / breeding / gene-specific marker / germplasm exchange / processing quality

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the administrative support of CIMMYT and CAAS over the past 40 years as well as the collaboration of various provincial academies of agricultural sciences. This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31461143021, 31761143006).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Zhonghu He, Xianchun Xia, Yong Zhang, Yan Zhang, Yonggui Xiao, Xinmin Chen, Simin Li, Yuanfeng Hao, Awais Rasheed, Zhiyong Xin, Qiaosheng Zhuang, Ennian Yang, Zheru Fan, Jun Yan, Ravi Singh, and Hans-Joachim Braun declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article is a review and does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2019. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)