Plant Breeding and Genetics Newsletter, No. 28, January 2012

Inside this issue, you will find reports (see especially 'Coordinated Research Projects (CRPs) and Research Coordination Meetings (RCMs)' section) on approaches to improve genotypes with high water and nutrition use efficiency for water scarce environments and on climate proofing food crops. The improvement of crops for adaptation to high temperatures in drought prone areas, and addressing other negative effects of climate variability and change, is of prime importance to achieve sustainable food security. To this end, technology packages must be developed and adapted and capacity must be developed. We report on the availability of new protocols and guidelines on low cost, simple and user-friendly mutation detection (http://mvgs.iaea.org/LaboratoryProtocals.aspx). These genotyping and phenotyping protocols are adapted for use by breeders in developing countries and include DNA extraction techniques and simple gel electrophoresis methods as well as seedling salinity screening of rice in hydroponics and soil, and drought tolerance screening. There are also new protocols for irradiation screening and radiosensitivity testing for mutation induction. Further, this biennium, we provided 10 low cost technology packages for mutation detection to national breeding programmes and other research institutions, the last six months alone three, encompassing low cost, PBGL developed and adapted TILLING kits, including reference DNA and specific protocols and guidelines (learn more about further PBGL activities in this issue). In line with tradition, we aim to report highlights to you in each volume of our newsletter. One major achievement to single out for the current volume is undoubtedly the promising development reported by participants in the Technical Cooperation project INT/5/150 on 'Responding to the transboundary threat of wheat black stem rust (Ug99)', that ten M5 resistant lines have been submitted to international yield trials (read the full story inside this issue). This biennium 25 new officially released mutant varieties have been added to the Mutant Variety Database (http://mvgs.iaea.org), which now holds more than 3200 entries.