Seeds of Discovery: Unlocking the Genetic Potential of Maize and Wheat Genetic Resources

The Seeds of Discovery (SeeD) project, a component of the Mexican Government-funded “Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture” (MasAgro) initiative, seeks to expand the ‘genetic repertoire’ available to maize and wheat breeding programs, in order to to aid the development of high-yielding, climate-ready and resource-efficient cultivars for the future. Almost twenty organizations participating in SeeD are working towards (a) comprehensively characterizing the native genetic diversity of maize and wheat; (b) making novel genetic variation more amenable for use in breeding programs by developing ‘bridging germplasm’ that harbors exotic alleles in elite genetic backgrounds; (c) making the expanding body of knowledge describing maize and wheat genetic resources widely and easily accessible through a web portal targeting agricultural research; and (d) strengthening demand-driven and impact-oriented agricultural research capacities in Mexico through student training, the establishment of a genetic-analysis service and the provision of intuitive software tools. We are using genotyping-by-sequencing (GbS) methodologies to characterize, with minimum ascertainment bias, the genetic relationships amongst 40,000 maize landrace populations and amongst 130,000 wheat genebank accessions. Strategic subsets are being evaluated under field conditions for a group of traits aligned with strategic breeding targets, to identify promising donor accessions for pre-breeding. Alleles from genetically diverse subsets of genebank accessions with favorable traits will be introgressed into elite genetic backgrounds to test their penetrance and to disentangle hidden, beneficial exotic alleles from their native backgrounds where they may not expressed. We present an overview of ongoing activities as well as opportunities for collaboration. Ongoing activities and results will be presented in greater detail in the maize and wheat sessions.