Teagasc has been confirmed as one of the research bodies involved in the recently launched Root2Res project, root phenotyping and genetic improvement for rotational crops resilient to environmental change
This European Union funded projected has a budget of €6.4 million. It will last for five years, ending in 2027.
The initiative will seek to develop new tools to evaluate root traits linked to more sustainable crops.
Measuring the ability of these crops to cope with environmental stress while delivering stable production will also be assessed.
Root2Res
Root2Res will deliver a package of solutions to enhance the resilience of rotational cropping system by considering relevant root traits with respect to the impact of climate change.
Innovations will include phenotyping, genetic and modelling tools that will help breeders evaluate, in field and controlled conditions, novel and existing genotypes of a range of crops (cereals, potatoes, legumes) as root ideotypes for different soil and climatic environments across Europe.
Root2Res will also investigate the potential role of emerging crops (sweet potato, lentil) to enhance resilience to environmental change, by assessing their genotypic and phenotypic variation.
The environments targeted include those predicted to suffer from the largest impact of climate change on yield in Europe.
Stress
Resilience to stress will focus on greater variation in water availability (both drought and water logging) and interactions with other stresses (temperature, reduced nutrient availability).
The research will also consider the impact of novel understanding of the plasticity of traits to stress. Traits to be assessed will focus on exploration, exploitation and rhizosphere microbiome related traits integrated in an extended phenotype.
The impacts of the more resilient ideotypes designed in Root2Res on the delivery of climate change mitigation outcomes (soil carbon sequestration, nutrient utilisation and greenhouse gas emission) will be assessed in field.
Root2Res will integrate a strong interaction with stakeholders all through the project, particularly plant breeders and farmers.
The ambition of Root2Res is to deliver crops adapted to changing environments and able to mitigate climate change.
This will be achieved by utilising existing genetic diversity for breeding programmes in a range of crop species essential to cropping systems and then widening understanding to crops suitable for resilient future systems.
This ambition will be supported by the joined commitment of a multidisciplinary partnership across Europe and beyond.
A total of 22 research-based organisations are involved in Root2Res including: Teagasc; ADAS; and the University of Dundee.