The Nordic growing conditions and climate change require adapted crops. However, plant breeding processes are costly and take a long time. Therefore, much is to be gained from cooperation between private and public actors.
The secretariat for the Nordic PPP collaboration for pre-breeding is placed at NordGen, and recently, four projects were granted.
METK is participating in two granted projects on potato and spring wheat, which are continuations of previous PPP projects.
Liina Jakobson, Head of the Department of Plant Breeding in METK:
Participating in this project is a major step forward for Estonian plant breeding. In these projects, we are cooperating with leading Scandinavian plant breeding companies. This will give us the opportunity to accelerate the development of plant breeding science in METK.
"If we know what methods are suitable for the Nordic climate, we can apply them to develop new Estonian climate-resilient spring wheat and potato varieties," she added.
Project “SustainPotato – PPP Collaboration to Advance Nordic Potato Variety Development With Enhanced Resistance to Diseases by Pre-breeding Phase II”
SustainPotato is a collaborative project in which more than 300 potato varieties are included to develop resistance against late blight and common scabs.
The project is a collaboration between Graminor AS (Norway), Danespo (Denmark), SLU (Sweden), NIBIO (Norway), NordGen (Nordic countries) and METK (Estonia).
Project “CResWheat – Pre-breeding for Nordic climate-resilient spring wheat II”
The main objective of “CResWheat II” is to support the breeding of climate-resilient spring wheat by identifying and creating genetic resources for disease resistance, drought tolerance, and critical adaptive traits for the Nordic region.
The goals include identifying donors resistant to the re-emerging wheat pest, gout fly, and the cereal cyst nematode, pests increasingly affecting spring wheat production due to pesticide restrictions, poor crop rotations, and climate change.
The project is a collaboration between SLU (Sweden), NordGen (Nordic countries), Nordic Seed A/S (Denmark), Boreal Plant Breeding Ltd (Finland), Sejet Planteforædling I/S (Denmark), Luke (Finland), Lantmännen (Sweden), NMBU (Norway), Aarhus University (Denmark), Graminor AS (Norway) and METK (Estonia).
The PPP-projects are funded by the Nordic governments and the private companies taking part in the projects. The costs are shared equally between the public and the private sector.
