Agroecological Zone: Geographical areas exhibiting similar climatic conditions that determine their ability to support agriculture, typically defined by their geography, humidity and elevation.
Breeder: An individual engaged in conducting the breeding scheme for one or more crop market segments.
Breeding Effort: The extent of effort put on closely related TPPs that derive from one Breeding Pipeline = crossing block.
Breeding Network: A group of institutions working together to develop and test products for one or more market segments.
- Network Agreement: A formal document signed by all network members, agreeing to the extent possible on:
- A set of priorities and products that network members agree to pursue.
- A set of principles that network members agree to abide by to foster technical collaboration, share data and germplasm and commit to standard operating processes.
- Generic roles and contributions by members
- How decisions are made, who and for what.
- Network Coordinator: The person responsible for creating and maintaining an effective and synergistic breeding network.
- Network Country Prioritization: The level of emphasis placed by CGIAR crop breeding programs in a country, given extent of local investments and crop importance.
- Level 1 Country; Low or low middle income countries that are politically stable in which over 1m ha of the crop is grown. It is important for partners to develop internal breeding capacity due to national crop importance. Network funds can support partner breeding activities.
- Level 2 Country: Low or low middle Income which are politically stable in which between 200k and 1 million ha of the crop is grown. Partner focuses on testing and release but if there is internal capacity (personnel, germplasm, infrastructure) and ambition to establish independent breeding program - this can be supported by network funds based on assessments and network consensus.
- Spill over Country: Middle to high income countries, or countries with less than 200k ha of this crop. Could have importance as strategic partners (e.g. host CGIAR hubs etc.). Unlikely to receive funding for breeding operations due to area of crop and/or income level but can benefit from training events and technology transfer.
- Network Member: An institution that is part of a crop x region breeding network. A network member may be from a Level 1 Country, Level 2 Country or a Spill Over Country.
Breeding Pipeline: The sum of the breeding efforts (product design, crossing and screening, early stage testing, late stage testing and on farm verification) focused on a market segment or on a group of similar market segments with very similar target product profiles ending with the identification of distinct products for each market segment the pipeline is focused on.
Breeding Program or Breeding Team: The crop breeding team within an organization pursuing one or more breeding pipelines.
Breeding Scheme: A systematic and detailed plan that describes the approaches taken to crossing, screening, early testing, late testing and on-farm verification that are under the control of the Breeding Program: Information may include: number of parental lines, type of crosses made, traits measured, number of locations, number of reps, plot size, design used, and selection intensity at each stage of the product development process.
Color: Color of the grain or flesh of the product required by a market segment.
Consumer Product Type: The processor and consumer requirements for a product, how they choose to process the product.
Crop: A crop in the CGIAR crop breeding portfolio. What entails a crop (as compared to a germplasm type) follows the convention what FAO defines to be a crop, so interoperability with FAO data sets can be ensured.
Germplasm Type are used for subspecies (e.g. Plantain and Banana, Durum and Bread (wheat) or other types of consistent subgroupings of crops between which crosses are rarely made (winter wheat, spring wheat). It is the crop’s assessment whether and how they want to use this attribute.
Market Intelligence : Practice of gathering and analyzing data to identify and describe opportunities for breeding and seed systems to optimize their contribution to CGIAR impact areas of nutrition and health, poverty reduction, environmental health, gender equality and social inclusion, and climate adaptation.
Market Segment: A group of farmers with common product needs, driven by consumer and processor requirements (what) combined with a set of farmer requirements based on where and how the product is grown.
- Market Segmentation: The process of and tools used to identify and aggregate farmers into groups with common product requirements.
- Market Segment Criteria: The eight criteria used to identify and define a market segment: Crop (and Germplasm Type), Material Type, Geography, Consumer Product Type, Color, Agroecological Zone, Production System, Maturity. Not all market segments will require all criteria to be identified e.g. maturity is not relevant for perennial crops. Non-applicable terms are captured as NA. To begin with, Market Segments were captured at the subregional level.
- Future Market Segment: New market segments that are driven by forward looking assumptions about changes in demographics, socio-economic status, climate and new technologies that drive new product requirements by farmers, processors, and/or consumers.
Material Type: Hybrid or non-Hybrid.
Maturity: Maturity of the crop required where the crop is grown.
NARES: National agricultural research and extension systems that are funded with public funds at the national or sub-national level, such as agricultural research institutions, extension institutions, universities or colleges.
Pipeline Investment Case: Assessment of the potential impact of investing in a breeding pipeline.
Population Improvement: The process of accumulating desirable alleles in a population through repeated crossing, selection and introgression of lines. Includes selecting new parental lines based on testing results and recycling them in crosses.
- Breeding Population: A group of (mostly) elite germplasm among which crosses are being made and selection is being implemented for a market segment or group of market segments with similar TPP's.
- Breeding Value: Additive genetic merit of an individual as a parent. In Quantitative Genetics terms, breeding value of an individual is the "sum of the average effect of alleles across the genome".
- Introgression: The process of introducing distinct alleles through crossing and backcrossing into a breeding population.
- Parental Selection: The process of selecting new crossing parents.
Portfolio (of Market Segments/Target Product Profiles/Breeding Pipelines): The prioritized set of market segments/target product profiles that an institution or breeding network pursues, and therefore has active breeding pipelines in place. Criteria used for prioritization may include probability of success, time and resources required to succeed, assumed size of the impact (or opportunity), presence of seed suppliers in the market segment, willingness of farmers in a market segment to switch to the new product, and the CGIAR’s role versus the role of NARES & the private sector in a market segment.
Product: A distinct product that is a clonal variety, true-to-seed variety or a hybrid that differs from others in the same sub-species or species by heritable traits.
Product Concept: Description of a hypothetical product and its potential benefit for farmers, processors, and consumers. Choices between product concepts provide insights on preferences for current and future market segments. The design of product concepts is inclusive and takes place over multiple rounds of engagement with breeders, social scientists, seed company representatives, and farmers and farmer organizations, processors and consumers.
Product Design and/or Advancement Team: Multidisciplinary team that meets at least annually to
- Review and update market segments and TPPs
- And/or make product advancement decisions in particular for entering on-farm verification and national performance testing
- And report on status of previous year's product advancements and releases
Product Development: The process used to identify, create and advance products for a market segment. and which can be divided into the following stages:
- Product Design: In CGIAR, the process of defining the Target Product Profile.
- Trait Discovery
- Trait Deployment
- Crossing & Screening
- Early Testing
- Late Testing
- On-Farm Verification: Understand and validate the performance of breeding products developed through large-scale testing with farmers across the TPE.
Product Identification or Product Evaluation: Stage-wise selection process to identify market-ready products from among a distinct set of fixed product-type products (either clones, true-to-seed varieties or hybrids).
- Candidate Product or Candidate Variety: Selected candidates later in the product development process, typically once they enter the Stage of On-Farm Verification or national variety trials. Candidates have gone through rigorous evaluation in the target region and have been selected against explicitly defined TPPs.
Product Preference and Trait Preference: A greater liking for one alternative over another or others.
Production System: How farmers choose to grow the crop, such as rainfed or irrigated, direct-seeded or transplanted, optimal or suboptimal fertilization etc.
Target Population of Environment (TPE): A relatively uniform group of crop production environments (where and how the crop is grown) in which products show relatively little Genotype x Environment (GxE) interaction for static, predictable, multi-year variation.
- TPE analysis: The process of aggregating prospective crop production environments (where and how the crop is grown) into groups within which products show relatively little GxE for static, predictable, multi-year variation.
Target Product Profile: The set of essential and nice-to-have traits, the scale used to measure each trait and the threshold score for each trait that is required in a new product to meet or exceed the needs of farmers, processors and consumers in a crop market segment.
- Essential Traits: Traits must be at or above the threshold value in all new products for a market segment in order to meet/exceed farmer, processor, and consumer requirements.
- Essential Improve Traits: Traits are deliberately being improved in the breeding scheme for a market segment.
- Essential Threshold Traits: Traits are being maintained at their current level in the breeding scheme for a market segment.
- Nice to Have Traits: Traits do not need to be in all new products for a market segment to meet/exceed farmer, processor, and consumer requirements.
Tiers of Breeding Effort: The extent of effort put on closely related TPPs that derive from one Breeding Pipeline = crossing block.
- Tier 1 TPP: The TPP which is the main target of the breeding effort (= for which most resources are available) is called Tier 1 TPP. The Tier 1 TPP Essential Trait requirements define the crossing block, and the extraction of candidates for early stage testing, late stage testing and on-farm verification. A Breeding Pipeline can only have one Tier 1 TPP. The other TPPs that derive from the same population improvement effort, are assigned Tier 2, 3 or 4.
- A Tier 2 TPP has a separate variety selection effort that selects different candidates from early stage testing, before proceeding to late stage testing and on-farm verification. This is typically the case when CGIAR breeding programs send the same set of lines, clones or hybrids for early testing to partners and these partners select (and/or extract in the case of segregating lines) different TPPs out of the materials received.
- A Tier 3 TPP differs from Tier 1 by one or two simply inherited Essential Improve Trait(s) that can be achieved through backcrossing, whether done so by CGIAR or partners.
- A Tier 4 TPP has a separate variety selection effort that selects different candidates from late stage testing, before proceeding to on-farm verification. This is typically the case when CGIAR breeding programs send the same set of lines, clones or hybrids for late testing to partners and these partners select (and/or extract in the case of segregating lines) different TPPs out of the material received.
Tiers of Market Segments: Given that TPPs and Market Segments have a 1:1 relationship:
- A Tier 1 TPP is delivered towards a Tier 1 Market Segment.
- A Tier 2 TPP is delivered towards a Tier 2 Market Segment.
- A Tier 3 TPP is delivered towards a Tier 3 Market Segment.
- A Tier 4 TPP is delivered towards a Tier 4 Market Segment.
- Market Segments with no TPP defined or no TPP linked to a CGIAR Breeding Pipeline are called Tier 5 Market Segments.
Users: Persons, businesses and organizations that use breeding materials, or multiplied seed thereof, such as public and private sector breeders, other researchers, seed companies, or farmers.
- End Users: Persons, businesses and organizations that consume, trade, distribute and/or process agricultural products. End users may have distinct requirements and preferences in terms of fresh product/raw material attributes, including taste, color, texture, storability, and processability which will drive unique market segments.
