How can breeders and other research programs continually improve their processes and products? And how can they ensure they keep a customer focus at the centre of their work?
UAV phenotyping is about collecting useful and meaningful data for integration into crop breeding programs. As such, a complete UAV phenotyping program should ideally include guidelines and considerations to evaluate the readiness of every part of the full process in order to ensure that no bottlenecks impede the throughput of the phenotyping activities all the while focused on the end goal of data.
In February, the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding (EiB) Platform assessed breeding operations and phenotyping capacity at five CGIAR and national crop research stations in West Africa.
During the week of 12 August 2019, cassava and yam breeders from CGIAR and national agricultural research centers in Colombia, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania participated in an EiB-sponsored visit to Brazil.
After carrying out assessments at 13 CGIAR centers, the trip was one of the improvement opportunities identified by EiB breeding operations and phenotyping specialists Steve Corak and Gustavo Teixeira.
In March 2019, EiB surveyed its members to identify the models of equipment currently used to digitize breeding operations.
These include package printers, label printers, barcode readers, electronic data collectors and seed counters that can be used to speed up, standardize and introduce efficiency savings into breeding program operations.
The survey results will be used to guide the outreach agenda of EiB module leaders, while the makes and models of equipment preferred by EiB users are available for reference on the EiB Toolbox.
In March 2019, EiB surveyed its members to identify preferences for models of equipment used to digitize breeding operations. The results are provided below.
In managed drought stress trials, it is critical to achieve the required level of drought at the target crop stage in order to generate high-quality, repeatable trial data.
The three key factors to be taken account are:
Crop breeding programs using conventional and/or molecular breeding approaches rely heavily on high-quality phenotypic data generated by evaluating genotypes in different environmental conditions, such as drought.
In this manual, the traits of interest for phenotyping are those that mitigate yield losses rather than those involved in the survival or escape of plants exposed to drought stress.
This manual is targeted at maize breeders and field technicians in tropical environments who are working on improving maize tolerance to drought stress.
Maize crops grown during the summer rainy season in the tropics occasionally face extreme weather conditions that limit crop establishment and yield potential. Among various abiotic stresses, contingent/intermittent soil waterlogging is one of the important constraints for maize production in the Asian tropics and many other maize growing areas around the world.
Monitoring soil moisture is critical to understand genotypic performance in yield trials and is then an important factor for data quality.
This tool provides information on theory, protocol, troubleshooting, and equipment needed to undertake a rigorous soil moisture monitoring in your breeding plots.