Modernizing Public Plant Breeding Programs to Deliver Higher Rates of Genetic Gain to Farmers in the Developing World

New breeding technologies and management approaches have revolutionized plant breeding in commercial cropping systems in temperate countries, but these have not been widely applied in public plant breeding programs in the developing world.  These programs will provide smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America with seed of the self-pollinated, open-pollinated, and vegetatively-propagated crops on which they depend for many years to come.  Rates of genetic gain generated by breeding programs and delivered to farmers, although rarely measured, appear to be very low.  Most public plant breeding programs have cycle times that are too long, are not optimized with respect to advancement rates and allocation of testing resources, do not have access to an integrated breeding informatics database, make no use of DNA markers in forward breeding, lack formal product concepts, and do not generate enough high-quality data to confidently recommend and promote their products as being clearly superior to varieties in use.  It is critical that public sector breeding programs modernize both their breeding technology and their management methods if rates of genetic gain high enough to feed still-growing populations in the face of climate change are to be achieved. The key metrics by which breeding programs and seed systems in developing countries need to be assessed are (i) the rate of genetic gain they deliver in farmers’ fields, and (ii) the average age of varieties in farmers’ fields.  The Gates Foundation is supporting several initiatives to provide support on breeding strategy, breeding informatics tools, low cost genotyping, pipeline optimization, and dissemination planning to CGIAR and national breeding programs in generating and delivering higher rates of genetic gain for smallholder farmers in Africa and South Asia.