A new milestone in data-driven breeding

File photo: Performance data on genotypes has been utilized to make crop selection and advancement decisions at ICRISAT’s first Product Advancement Meeting, heralding a significant step forward in data-driven breeding.

ICRISAT News, December 2021

Cross-functional crop teams based in Asia, Eastern and Southern Africa and West and Central Africa participated in the hybrid meeting organized on the 9^th of December.

Chairing the session, Dr Arvind Kumar, Deputy Director General – Research, ICRISAT, described it as historic day for breeding program modernization as the Product Advancement Meetings facilitate rigorous assessment of the breeding program’s progress while enabling data-based decisions in advancing products. It is feasible to assess the rates of genetic gain from various pipelines in a systematic way and take measures to enhance it further, he said.

Dr Rajeev Varshney, Research Program Director – Accelerated Crop Improvement, ICRISAT, commended the efforts of Dr Ashok Kumar, Product Placement Lead – Asia and the entire Crop breeding team for internalizing the breeding program modernization and making efforts to integrate precision genetic and genomic tools, analytical methods to increase efficiencies and genetic gains. He called for the precise management of data and the storing of results for ease of retrieving in the future.

ICRISAT has embarked on the journey of breeding program modernization, particularly in the design, development and dissemination of demand-driven improved products. The Stage-Gate model was introduced as a technique to help create more value. It improves an organization’s ability to convert innovative ideas into practical applications and new products using a roadmap comprising of various interventions/deliverables (stages). The Stage-Gate process encompasses all the interventions (stages) and control points (gates) in the product design, discovery, product development, product testing and validation and commercialization.

Targeted Product Profiles were developed by involving stakeholders and breeding schemes have been developed andoptimized based on the profiles. Breeding schemes workflows are based on the size of the relevant market segment and product profile attributes. The product prototypes are tested in multi-environment trials (METs) in Target Population of Environments (TPEs) and data from METs are considered in advancement decisions.