EXPERT WORKING GROUP TOPIC SUBMISSION 2 SB Liaisons: H. Braun, G. Moore

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1 Coordinating global research for wheat Proposal number 1 : VO Date of reception 1 : EXPERT WORKING GROUP TOPIC SUBMISSION 2 SB Liaisons: H. Braun, G. Moore Topic title Global Wheat Germplasm Conservation and Use Community. Proposer(s) Proposer Name Thomas 1 Surname Payne Institution International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center Address CIMMYT, Apdo. Postal 6-641; Mexico, DF; MEXICO T.Payne@cgiar.org Telephone ext Proposer Name Ahmed 2 Surname Amri Institution International Centre for Agricultural Research for the Dry Areas Address ICARDA, Rabat, Morocco A.Amri@cgiar.org Telephone Proposer Name Paula 3 Surname Bramel Institution Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) Address Platz der Vereinten Nationen 7; Bonn, Germany Paula.Bramel@croptrust.org Telephone Summary Ex situ collections of wheat and related species held in genebanks are genetic resources that need to be managed securely in a cost effective manner and accessed easily by a broad range of users. Individually held collections need to be linked and operate within a global system to insure the representative, effective, secure long- term conservation of the crops diversity and need to be valued through use in activities such as pre- breeding. The genebanks and users were brought together in to draft a Global Wheat Conservation Strategy. This global strategy identified focused action needed to support the wheat global ex situ conservation system through better coordination, capacity building, integrated information systems, rationalizing existing collections, and rectifying key gaps in existing collections. The global crop conservation strategy assessed the status of conservation and its key needs but there is also a need to better ensure a continuum genebanks to the users community. The wheat conservation and use community needs to operate as a global partnership to insure the cohesion, security, and functionality of a global system for ex situ conservation and use. This partnership would serve as a platform to enhance and compliment current bilateral interactions that are driven by 1 For Secretariat use only, do not fill 2 Please send the completed form to Hélène Lucas, Wheat.Initiative@versailles.inra.fr, under a Word format. 1

2 specific current demands and opportunities. The proposed expert working group aims at fuller development of this global platform, to update the global conservation and use strategy, to address the priority needs, and to guide future efforts. Detailed description (5 pages maximum) Rationale The Global Wheat Germplasm Conservation and Use Community EWG is a group of individuals and/or institutions with a common interest in the conservation and use of wheat crop diversity. Some of the individual or institutions with an interest are: 1. Holders of major and/or unique ex situ collections with a collective interest in high quality genebank activities such as collection, conservation, characterization, distribution, and use; 2. Research users who have an interest in breeding and other crop research; 3. Development users who have an interest in food security, locally adapted varieties, local production, local cultural value, nutrition and other aspects of use in the agricultural and food system; 4. Private sector users have an interest in sustained supply or demand aspect of seed or food as a commodity; 5. Public Sector donors or governments have an interest in food security, food supply, food prices, economic growth, markets, poverty reduction in relation to supply and demand of local production and a specific commodity; 6. Farmers have an interest in new varieties for improved productivity in their local conditions or meeting new higher value market opportunities. It will not be possible to engage all of these groups directly but they all have a common interest in the availability of crop diversity and in a form to meet their needs; in securing long term conservation for future needs; in safety duplication for insurance against loss; in the availability of information and plenty of it to enhance use and ease of use; and facilitated access when needed in an efficient and convenient way. This should be a community that participates, interacts, supports, uses, and benefits from the global system for ex situ conservation. This is a system that currently includes the Svalbard Global Seed Vault; International agricultural development efforts like the Wheat CRP; International, regional, and national collections, public and private sector plant breeders and other researchers; and farmers. This system has interdependence amongst members due to the complementary composition of diverse collections, the local nature of the diversity in the fields, the global nature of the users, and the international policy environment that frames access and benefit sharing. Many of the community members have different access, knowledge, and capacity to be part of the global system. Thus, there is a need to share knowledge and capacity widely in the community. Thus communications, capacity building, priority setting, and information sharing will be a key function of this community in building the global wheat ex situ conservation system. Description of the EWG aims The wheat conservation and use community has many members who will acknowledge their role and participate in the global system to varying degrees. Some have already actively engaged in the development of the global wheat crop conservation strategies. Others have actively engaged in working or advisory groups for national or regional genetic resources systems. The proposed wheat germplasm expert working group will serve to represent and engage this global community to insure that the two roles for crop communities in the global system are being met. One is to link the genebanks together to ensure a rational, cost effective system. The second is insuring that the system operates to meet the needs of the users. Specifically, the wheat germplasm expert working group will contribute to updating the global wheat conservation strategy including various use dimensions, provide global assessments, technical advice, and recommendations for the conservation and use of genetic resources of 2

3 wheat and related species to individual genebanks, the Crop Trust, and other globally important holders of the crop collection as needed. The expert working group will reach out to the global user community through its representation as well as through targeted communications and information sharing. The specific focus will be: Initiate and lead the update of the global conservation strategy as needed; Identify and facilitate mechanisms for development of crop conservation and use communities as a global partnership platform with better participation of diverse stakeholders; Advice on issues related to user needs such as information, quality management, user subsets, key acquisitions, and safety duplication; Promote international standards for genebanks, including sound systems for monitoring, quality management and staff training; Alert the community of any emergency situation at a genebank, germplasm collections in danger of being lost, and advice on action needed to rescue the important material; Identify gaps in global collections and develop proposals to fill these gaps through exchange and collaborative collecting trips; Prioritize traits and collections for evaluation for future collaborative efforts Advice crop curators on issues related to ensuring that standardized, accurate, and useful accession level information is available; Advice on best ways to ensure the conservation, maintenance and supply of special genetic and cytogenetic stocks; Advice on opportunities for greater collaboration between genebanks for regenerations, quality management systems, research needs, automations, rationalization, or other activities; Encourage the development of best practices for conservation and use of genetic resources and their sharing through the Crop Genebank Knowledge Base; Identify past examples of the impact of the conservation and use of genetic resources, and alert the community to opportunity for future impact. Who will guide the wheat germplasm expert working group to advice the global system? The American Society of Agronomy has described the role of the leadership in these types of research communities, as One key to vibrant communities is the thing that community leaders do that effectively engages members to become doers. It is a work of encouragement and helping members to be active participants. This role for leadership will also be important to this expert working group that needs to be engaged and able to allocate enough time to be an active participant and facilitator. The leader needs to have recognition within the community and can come from a wide range of disciplines, such as academic researcher, public or private breeder, or private seed or food companies. The leadership should be selected from amongst the volunteers to the EWG or the EWG could decide to request an additional volunteer to join specifically as the leader. The composition of the wheat germplasm expert working group should represent the global conservation and user community. The membership will be entirely voluntary and consist of representation from globally important collections, representation from various users including public and private sector plant breeders and researchers from other scientific disciplines, other types of users such as end- users if appropriate. The expert working group should maintain a global perspective and reach out through a careful consideration of the geographical representation of the various members. The expert working group will be chaired by a recognized international expert in wheat conservation and/or use and be selected by the EWG. Efforts will need to be made to insure global communications of the opportunity to join the EWG. If there is a significant gap in representation, the EWG may solicit volunteers to fill this gap. If the volunteer EWG is larger than 8-10 members, the group will designate a smaller steering committee to help guide it. 3

4 The Wheat Germplasm EWG will have a contact meeting once per year at a key international meeting or initiatives to facilitate interaction, consultation, and communication. These meeting might be held as an open consultation workshop as well on specific topics if needed. They will plan to have at least one additional video conference each year. If the EWG is more than 10 members, it might be necessary to establish a steering committee that will interact through video conferencing at least twice per year. All meetings will share a draft agenda with the community prior to meeting to get input into the agenda. The minutes from the meeting will be shared and any significant report shared at the meeting or as a result of the actions of the EWG will also be shared with the community. The process of effective communication between meeting and with the community will be a key activity for the initial EWG. Expected deliverables/outputs of the EWG 1. Development of a global model for collaboration and sharing responsibilities for an effective and efficient management of key collections of genetic resources. 2. Identification of major needs and opportunities for upgrading key collections and building the capacity of managers to maintain and distribute them efficiently and effectively over long term. 3. Assess the adequacy of the germplasm base for wheat and related species and make recommendations for broadening and strengthening each base via additional exploration, collection, acquisition of private collections, and evaluation. 4. Maintain the global conservation strategy and make recommendations for funding priority collections, promoting partnerships and sharing responsibilities, facilities and tasks. 5. Promotion of more targeted use of genetic resources through development of sub- setting approaches and efficient use in pre- breeding; 6. Assess progress in wheat improvement through breeding and the role germplasm resources might play in improving traits of economic importance. 7. Suggest guidelines for the effective regeneration, increase, distribution, evaluation and utilization of wheat genetic resource accessions. 8. Develop a better understanding of international germplasm activities, identifying and describing implications for science and agriculture. 9. Provide means for farmers groups and commodity groups to voice opinions on need for plant germplasm resources, their improvement and utilization to those individuals responsible for these areas at the national level. 10. Annual reporting to the International Wheat Initiative and others as required. Timeline of Activities Establishment of volunteer EWG by November 30, 2014 Designation of the Chair of the EWG by February, 2015 Initial teleconference of EWG by February 2015 Second teleconference by August, 2015 Annual meetings starting in September 2015 at the International Wheat Conference, Sydney, Australia. Meetings will be held in conjunction with major international wheat conferences. Teleconference meetings will be held at least once, or is needed twice per year from 2016 to Alignment with the Wheat Initiative objectives The Global Wheat Germplasm Expert Working Group will coordinate worldwide research efforts in the fields of wheat genetic resource conservation and access for use. It will provide a forum to facilitate communication between research groups and organizations worldwide. The wheat germplasm expert working group aims to foster communication between the research community, funders and global policy makers at the international level to meet their research and development goals. Potential links with other Wheat Initiative activities The Wheat Information Systems Expert Working Group focuses on the development of an 4

5 International Wheat Information System to support the wheat research community. A relationship between this information system and global ex situ collections information system, GeneSys ( pgr), is sensible, practical and achievable. The Wheat Breeding Methods and Strategies Expert Working Group aims to build capacity and to support improved breeding methods research, and international exchange of information and germplasm. Anticipated deliverables include more efficient wheat pre- breeding through more targeted use of wheat genetic resources. Underpinning wheat breeding methods research will be increased exchange of wheat germplasm and information. The Wheat Phenotyping Expert Working Group will reduce the gap between genomics and phenotyping for wheat ex situ collections, as well as by developing new technologies focused on wheat phenotyping on an international scale. It will promote collaborations and exchange of expertise in wheat phenotyping, enhance the integration of phenotyping into conservation, breeding and genomics programs. Supporting countries/institutes Core members: CIMMYT, ICARDA, CRP WHEAT, Wheat Genetic Resources Center (Kansas State Univ.), Vavilov Research Institute (Russia), University of Nottingham (UK), Global Crop Diversity Trust Potential participating countries 3 Nominated (self- supported) members: GRDC (Australia), CAAS (China), Martonvasar ARI (Hungary), IPK Gatersleben (Germany), ICAR (India), JIRCAS (Japan), BBSRC (UK), USDA (USA), Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (Cornell) Corporate (self- supported) members: Bayer, KWS, Limagrain, Syngenta Resources (budget requirement, potential funders, etc.) There are three possible sources of funds for the Global Wheat Germplasm for the first few years. Beside funds required from the Wheat Initiative, there will be operational funds from the Genebank CRP and possibly the WHEAT CRP. The funds required will generally cover the annual contact meeting, communication cost for video conferencing and other means, honorarium for the Chair, travel funds for the Chair to attend key meetings at least twice per year, editing and publication of reports as needed, survey cost for updating global conservation strategy. The budget estimate does not include any follow- up activities that will be identified by the group for actions. These will be pursued by separate proposals to possible institutions and donors. We anticipate a budget need for the next three years of about $70,000 per year but this would reduce to a more routine cost of about $50,000 per year for the basic operations of the Wheat Germplasm EWG. The host for the EWG will initially be CIMMYT and ICARDA. This will be finalized with input of the initial Wheat Germplasm EWG. Planned duration of EWG (in years) For 10 years, Other comments USDA also support Crop Germplasm Committees (CGC) as specific national working group of specialists providing analysis, data and recommendations on genetic resources within a specific crop or group of related crops of present or future economic importance. These committees represent their user community. Their membership consists of representation from federal, state, and private sectors; representation from various scientific disciplines; and geographical representation for the crop(s). The CIMMYT Wheat Germplasm Bank manager is an observer to the Wheat CGC. Date of submission to the International Scientific Coordinator 23 June Not limited to current members of the Wheat Initiative 5