Efficient Screening Techniques to Identify Mutants with Disease Resistance for Coffee and Banana

Plant diseases pose a major threat to global food security. It is strongly predicted that the compounding factors of climate change and variability, newly emerging races of pathogens, and reliance on monocultures will increase the severity of the problem. The ability for Member States to maintain farmer’s livelihoods and to adequately feed their population with nutritious food is at risk.  Diseases affect all crops and result in massive yield losses. Traditional breeding methods are limited by narrow gene pools, and by the long time required to develop new varieties. Induced mutations offer a safe, proven and acceptable alternative route to increase the efficiency of producing crops with enhanced resistance to biotic stress. For example a search of the Mutant Variety Database (mvgs.iaea.org) shows 696 varieties when "disease" is used as a search term, and 132 varieties when "rust" is used as a keyword. Most are cereals. While progress is being made in mutation breeding of cereals owing to their ease of fertilization, excellent genetic resources and large network of researchers, less has been achieved with vegetatively propagated and perennial crops. In large part this is due to bottlenecks in mutation induction and  screening.  This CRP will focus on the development of technology packages to enhance the efficiency of generation and screening mutant populations of crop species for the improved resistance to plant diseases. Vegetatively propagated banana and the polyploid perennial arabica coffee are examples of target species where major improvements are needed to overcome existing bottlenecks .  Activities will also include methods of mutant characterization to facilitate breeding and transfer of adapted varieties to farmers.