Breeding scheme optimization

Breeding scheme design using quantitative genetics: 10 session course

This training is a professional development course designed by the Excellence in Breeding (EiB) Platform to increase the skillset of plant breeders to design breeding schemes. Across the public and private sector there is a gap on how to design breeding schemes and instead breeding schemes are normally inherited from one breeder to the other. EiB’s Module 2 and collaborators from seed industry have addressed this issue by developing and making this training available. 

Breeding pipeline manager

This tool aims to help breeding professionals to formalize the market segments, product profiles and breeding schemes associated to their breeding program(s). It serves as repository of valuable information that can be used for different purposes, e.g. discussions with leadership on proper targets, level of investment in different markets, breeding scheme optimization discussions to allocate resources more efficiently, share information with partners remotely, among others. The resulting documents can be considered the “blueprints” of the design step in the breeding process.

Characterization of rice quality traits to improve breeding for Latin America and the Caribbean

In this Story of Excellence, Juan Arbelaez (the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Maribel Cruz (Latin American Fund for Irrigated Rice) present their work on genetic and phenotypic characterization of rice grain quality traits to define breeding strategies for improving rice milling, appearance, and cooking qualities in Latin America and the Caribbean.