Optimizing oat floral architecture to maximize grain yield and quality
- Research Topic: Intercropping/Other / New Popular
- Back to Project Listing
The goal of the Project is to identify and exploit the genetic determinants of floral architecture in oat in order to increase grain number and optimize groat percentage.
Project Details
- Listing ID: 6561
- Project Status In Progress
- Principal Investigators Dr. Jean-Sebastien Parent, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
- Projects With Results Projects with Results
- Project Dates 2025-2028
- Abstract/Summary This project aims to address the information gap and advance oat breeding towards a breeding-by-design approach, often referred to as Breeding 4.0. The current paradigm in breeding R&D delineates breeding into four stages: Breeding 1.0 involves incidental seed selection by farmers, followed by Breeding 2.0, which incorporates Mendelian genetics and field design along with statistical procedures for accurate selection—serving as the backbone of breeding methodologies. Breeding 3.0 represents the integration of genomics and phenomics tools, utilizing methods such as genomic selection to enhance agronomic traits like yield. This stage represents current state-of-the-art practices in many commercial field crop breeding programs. Breeding 4.0, or breeding-by-design, pushes the boundaries further by enabling the deliberate combination of known alleles into optimal combinations and could help reach breeding goals for oat (2).
