Cooperation between private and public actors – the development of important Nordic crops continues
During 2024 to 2026, four collaborative projects – focusing on potatoes, berries, spring wheat and oats – are underway within the Nordic Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for pre-breeding. Over the past year, progress has been made in identifying cultivars and breeding lines with traits against diseases, pests, drought and other challenges related to climate change.
The top photo shows project participants in CResWheat during a field visit at Lantmännen in Svalöv, 2024. Photo: Marwan Alamrani, SLU.
A short growing season combined with unpredictable weather, and emerging pests and diseases means that the Nordic agricultural faces unique challenges. Developing new plant varieties to address these issues requires both time and resources. That is why the public sector in the Nordic Region cooperates with private plant breeding companies to achieve the highest possible benefit for the Nordic agriculture. This is done through the Nordic Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for pre-breeding. In the current project period (2024-2026), four PPP projects are in progress.
One of these is the project shortened to “CResWheat II” that has the main goal to support the development of spring wheat varieties adapted to the Nordic region, and resilient to challenges connected with climate change, pests, and diseases. In phase I of the project (2021-2023), the project evaluated around 190 European wheat cultivars and Nordic breeding lines across more than 20 field trials at seven locations in four Nordic countries. Through this extensive testing, wheat lines were identified that exhibited variations in flowering time, as well as resistance to several key diseases and abiotic stress like pre-harvest sprouting.
In phase II, the project is focusing on the introgression of traits such as resistance to major wheat diseases (stripe rust, leaf rust, stem rust, septoria tritici blotch, powdery mildew, stagonospora nodorum blotch, tan spot) and cereal cyst nematode as well as pre-harvest sprouting into spring wheat varieties adapted to Nordic growing conditions, using the donors identified in Phase I.
Unexpected and unwelcome fly
“An additional interesting development is that we lately have seen repeated occurrences of gout fly (Chlorops pumilionis) infestation in spring wheat. Although it was not part of our initial objectives, we recognised it as an emerging concern, and in phase II, we are exploring old landraces and cultivars to uncover new sources of resistance. This issue is particularly urgent, as there is currently no known resistance or tolerance to the pest and only limited chemical control options are available,” says project leader Therese Bengtsson, Associate Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
Another PPP project focusing on cereals is abbreviated as RobOat. So far, this project has assembled a panel of 259 oat accessions, including NordGen core sets, PanOat genotypes, Nordic Seed varieties, and rust differential lines, selected based on previous research. This selection was propagated in Alnarp by NordGen. The investigation on the critical growth stages for drought and waterlogging stresses in oats has started. The aim is to optimize the phenotyping methodology for drought and also to identify Nordic oat cultivars and breeding lines with differential responses to temperature and precipitation. During 2025, the field activities will continue to test the resistance of the oats to drought, water logging, crown rust and semi loose smut.
“We are really looking forward to the coming growing season and the first real field trials. The project brings together the diverse oat expertise of the Nordic countries in a comprehensive way. We will learn about the behaviour of the oat material under different stress conditions, which are predicted to increase with climate change,” says Project Leader Marja Jalli, Group Manager and Senior Scientist at Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).
Berries and potatoes with disease resistance
The project BERRIES has the main aim to develop the germplasm of strawberry and raspberry that is available for Nordic and Baltic breeding. Some of the main activities since the project started have been to collect multi-trait phenotypic data from material of reconstructed garden strawberry, and preparations being made for share of pollen and seed to project partners. Further, a core set of 188 unique raspberry clones from the Nordic-Baltic collections were defined to represent the gene pool, these have been genotyped and are being phenotyped as well.
“An inoculation trial has also been carried out comparing isolates of different fungi causing black root rot in raspberry, as a preparation for further experiments where a range of cultivars will be tested in search for resistance sources,” says Dag Røen, Breeder and Project Leader at Njøs Fruit and Berry Centre.
The last of the four projects, shortened to “SustainPotato II”, is a continuation from the previous project period focusing on potatoes with the main aim to develop more robust and competitive Nordic potato varieties. The primary objective is clear: enhance disease resistance in potato breeding across the Nordic region, with a particular emphasis on combatting the formidable late blight disease (Phytophthora infestans). In addition to late blight resistance, other work packages in the project focus on studying the plant microbiome interactions and predictive breeding strategies.
“Late blight threatens Nordic potato production. Therefore, identifying resistance genes in collaboration with breeding entities is crucial. During 2024, the work on late blight resistance proceeded as planned with genotyping, phenotyping and field trials at Danespo, Graminor, METK and SLU, just to mention some of the project activities, says Project Leader Aakash Chawade, Associate Professor at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
The PPP collaboration
The PPP for pre-breeding is funded by the Nordic countries through the Nordic Council of Ministers as well as the plant breeding entities. The budget for the project period 2024-2026 is in total SEK 60,9 million (26,9 million from the Nordic countries and 34 million from the plant breeding entities). The PPP secretariat is placed at NordGen. Read the report about the previous project period (2021-2023) here.
List of current project partners
"BERRIES – Development of Germplasm for Berry Crops"
Njøs Fruit and Berry Centre AS (NO) – Graminor AS (NO) – Natural Resources Institute Finland, Luke (FI) – Estonian University of Life Sciences (EE) – Institute of Horticulture (LV) – The Programme for Diversity of Cultivated Plants / SLU (SE) – University of Copenhagen (DK) – The Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, NIBIO (NO)
"RobOat – Robustness of Oats for the Nordic Region"
Agrologica (DK) – Boreal Plant Breeding Ltd (FI) – Graminor AS (NO) – Lantmännen (SE) – Agricultural University of Iceland (IS) – Luke (FI) – Lund University (SE) – Norwegian University of Life Sciences, NMBU (NO) – NordGen (the Nordic countries) – Nordic Seed A/S (DK) – Oatly (SE) – SLU (SE)
"CResWheat – Pre-breeding for Nordic climate-resilient spring wheat II"
SLU (SE) – NordGen (the Nordic countries) – Nordic Seed A/S (DK) – Boreal Plant Breeding Ltd (FI) – Sejet Planteforædling I/S (DK) – Luke (FI) – Lantmännen (SE) – NMBU (NO) – Aarhus University (DK) – Graminor AS (NO) – Centre of Estonian Rural Research and Knowledge, METK (EE)
"SustainPotato – PPP Collaboration to Advance Nordic Potato Variety Development With Enhanced Resistance to Diseases by Pre-breeding Phase II"
Graminor AS (NO) – Danespo (DK) – SLU (SE) – NIBIO (NO) – NordGen (the Nordic countries) –METK (EE)