Development of novel technological approaches for a low-cost and reliable characterization of CROP Yield QUALity Traits of target crops grown under Changing Environmental Conditions

The expansion of world population requires the development of new strategies and tools for agriculture to ensure that high levels of production will accommodate the needs of world population by developing a highly productive and resource efficient agricultural systems. To that end, it is necessary to provide current breeding programs with improved methodologies (traits and protocols) for phenotyping together with a deeper knowledge of the molecular and metabolic mechanisms that modulate plant response to abiotic constraints in terms of yield and quality. Therefore, the development of new technological approaches, such as multispectral sensors and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) is critical to deliver new tools for efficient breeding programs and in field management of crops. The current project has five main objectives: 1st objective is to investigate how will crop (wheat, rice, soybean, maize and quinoa) production and quality will be affected by the environment. 2nd objective is to identify the best adapted cultivars and molecular markers conferring a better grain yield and quality. 3rd objective is to investigate what phenotyping and molecular traits can better inform on crop yield and resource (water, nutrients, radiation) use efficiency. 4th objective is to develop the use of different remote sensing at field and labs levels as strategic tools to determine yield value. 5th objective will be the development of models.
The result will be to build on the strong existing research network of 5 EU academic, 5 non-EU academic institutions and 2 firms. The project pursues the main objective of generating a common solid knowledge basis arising from the fruitful cross-sectorial synergy between forefront research Centers in precision agriculture and industry, in a cross-fertilization multidisciplinary approach that will provide new tests and methodologies (or improve existing ones) to assess. In this proposal, funding is requested for all TC partners.