Durum wheat genetic resources can help mitigate negative impact of climate change in Ethiopia, and beyond, through developing its climate-resilient cultivars

Global aridity is increasing and drought is expected to expand and seriously affect crop productivity in sub-Saharan Africa. Developing crop cultivars well-adapted to drought can help promote farmers’ resilience to climate change.

Durum wheat is one of Ethiopia’s major crops that is being seriously affected by expanding drought, as it is mainly produced under rain-fed conditions.

In this project, we aim to develop and supply drought tolerant durum wheat germplasm to breeders for eventual release of new cultivars that can produce high grain yield and rich in quality protein for cultivation under rainfed conditions in drought-prone areas, thereby enhance food and nutritional security and improve rural livelihoods.

This will be achieved through (1) phenotyping durum wheat germplasm resources for their tolerance to drought  in the field and biotron and analyze the protein/lysine contents of drought tolerant germplasm; (2) genotyping diverse durum wheat germplasm followed by conducting genome-wide association studies to identify favorable alleles for drought tolerance and develop sets of molecular markers that can be used in marker assisted selection (MAS); (3) characterize durum what orthologues of genes that are known to contribute to abiotic stresses in other cereals and use in MAS; and (4) induce somaclonal variation and develop hybrids for combining favorable alleles contributing to these traits.