Thematic Priority: INCO-2003-B1.2: Improving the water consumption by users and uses

EEC funded project  INCO-CT-2005-015468

Coordinator: Dr. Pieter B.F. Ouwerkerk, Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands, E-mail: p.b.f.ouwerkerk@biology.leidenuniv.nl

Participants: Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Center for Plant Signal Transduction and Metabolomics, Beijing (PR China); CIRAD, UMR PIA, AMIS Department, Montpellier (France); CRA - Istituto Sperimentale per la Cerealicoltura, Sezione Specializzata per la Risicoltura, Vercelli (Italy); National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong (PR China); Agricultural Research Center - Rice Research Program, Agricultural Genetic Engineering Research Institute (AGERI), Giza (Egypt); Laboratory of Plant Molecular biology, Centre of Biotechnology, Sfax (Tunisia); UCAM-FSSM, Faculté des Sciences Semlalia, Département de Biologie, Laboratoire de Physiologie Végétale, Equipe Biotechnologies Végétales, Marrakech (Morocco); Upland Rice Research Center (URRC), College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, CAU, Beijing (PR China); School of Biological Sciences, Cruicshank Building, St Machar Drive, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen (UK).

CEDROME is developed within the EEC VI FP for the period 01.01.2006 – 31.12.2008

WEB site:  http://biology.leidenuniv.nl/ibl/S2/CEDROME

Summary

Limited water resources are now a major challenge to World food security especially in many developing countries such as those in the Mediterranean basin. Cereal cultivation, including rice and wheat, requires a tremendous amount of water, and any deficiency can severely affect yield. CEDROME aims to develop drought resistant cereals to support the efficient use of water supplies in the Mediterranean area. Additionally, development of drought resistant cereals will also facilitate increased agricultural production by making use of large areas of yet underdeveloped dry lands. With the available genomic sequence, the well-defined genetic maps and large collection of mutation and insertion lines, rice is the obvious model for this research. The knowledge obtained and functional genes identified from rice can be extrapolated in the improvement of other cereal crops such as wheat, barley and sorghum since they are closely related. This multi-disciplinary project combines European and MPC expertise in classical breeding, plant physiology and cereal crop biotechnology to assist the development of a new generation of wheat and upland rice varieties with enhanced drought resistance. Three Chinese partners in this project provide expertise in cereal biotechnology, as well as valuable breeding tools and materials. Molecular markers will be used to identify drought-related loci. Conventional breeding will be used to combine drought resistance genes in new cultivars and new candidate drought resistance genes will be identified. Constructs will be made with these new and existing putative drought resistance genes and transgenic rice and wheat plants will be evaluated in various countries under different growing conditions. In addition genetic approaches will be taken to identify new genes from different mutagenized populations. Results of this project will support sustainable development in the Mediterranean area and will also be applicable to other cereal-growing countries.