Use of genetic resources
More than half a million wheat genetic resources are resting in gene banks all over the world. Intensive discussions were made how to conserve and use these plethora, but successful strategies were rare. We follow since 30 years two approaches using genetic resources for future agriculture. The first approach is to evaluate the potential of old species to be re-established for modern agriculture. For those with high potential, we start breeding programs in order to facilitate their wide acceptance in agriculture and processing industry. The second approach is to evaluate with latest breeding technology landraces and old varieties in bread wheat in order to find candidates, which help to improve grain yield potential of bread wheat through prebreeding to feed the future world.
