Cornell researchers are partnering on the newly announced Feed the Future Climate Resilient Cereals Innovation Lab (CRCIL), providing plant breeding expertise and powerful computational tools to increase the accessibility of cereal crops for those most vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition.
The $22 million award from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is led by Kansas State University and includes U.S. and international partners aiming to advance breeding of four major world crops – sorghum, millet, wheat and rice.
“Feed the Future Innovation Labs are driving novel solutions to tackle hunger and poverty,” said Dina Esposito, Feed the Future deputy coordinator and USAID’s assistant to the administrator for resilience, environment and food security. “Advancing this work is critical to generate a pipeline of climate adapted crops so we can strengthen the resilience of small-scale farmers and meet their current and future needs.”
CRCIL incorporates Cornell-led strengths developed through the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement (ILCI) as well as next-generation plant breeding platforms from Breeding Insight.
CRCIL will collaborate with ILCI to address sorghum and millet crop breeding needs across Feed the Future regions. Their alliance will create a platform for designing complementary cereal breeding projects and accelerate the transfer of climate-resilient enhanced breeding material to ILCI’s cereal variety development activities.
This collaborative effort between the two innovation labs aims to co-develop tools, technologies and methods needed by under-resourced National Agricultural Research Institutes in the target regions. The goal is to create improved varieties of sorghum and finger millet that are resilient to climate change and deliver for the needs of farmers and consumers in local communities, according to ILCI director Stephen Kresovich.
Source: cornell.edu
Photo Credit: istock-mailson-pignata
Categories: New York, Crops, Sorghum