Accelerated Breeding Techniques for the Development of Crop Resistance to Biotic Stress

Enhancing plant health capacities across Member States is essential for safeguarding major staple crops against emerging and transboundary pests and diseases, thereby strengthening agricultural resilience and food security. The rapid spread of high-impact threats driven by climate change, expanding agricultural trade, and the increased movement of seed and planting material, underscores the urgent need for timely detection, rapid diagnostics and proactive disease and pest management strategies. This Coordinated Research Project (CRP) will address priority threats affecting globally important crops, including one cereal crop (wheat blast in wheat and/or fall armyworm in maize), late blight in potato, and cassava witches broom disease in cassava. These diseases and pests pose significant risks for smallholder and commercial production systems across Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. The CRP aims to strengthen crop resilience by generating and characterizing novel genetic diversity through nuclear techniques, accelerating breeding pipelines for disease and pest resistance, and developing cost-effective, field-deployable diagnostic tools to support early detection and surveillance. The CRP will also strengthen integrated disease-management strategies by advancing the development and deployment of effective biological control agents, supporting environmentally sustainable approaches to suppress key pests and pathogens across diverse production systems.
Through collaborative research, technology transfer, and targeted capacity building, this initiative will enable Member States to detect, monitor and manage transboundary plant health threats more effectively and accelerate the development of resistant varieties. By reinforcing national plant health and breeding systems, the CRP will help safeguard sustainable crop production and improve resilience to evolving biotic stresses. Ultimately, the CRP seeks to contribute to global food security through enhanced preparedness, improved plant-health systems, and resilient agricultural practices.