Five wheat crop harvests have been obtained this year at Russia's only Collective Use Center (CUC) for accelerated breeding of cereal crops, launched at the Siberian Federal Scientific Centre of Agro-BioTechnologies (SFSCA RAS) near Novosibirsk in 2022. Wheat matures in an average of two months after planting, the center's director Kirill Golokhvast told TASS.
" The plants produced five harvests in 2023. The average time from planting to maturity of wheat seeds was 60 days. This makes it possible to carry out breeding work significantly faster ", - reported Golokhvast.
The center was built under the "Breads of Russia" project, which is implemented by a team of 10 organizations: the head structure is the N.I. Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR), also participating are the SFSCA RAS, Kurchatov Genomic Center, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Omsk agricultural research centers, commercial firm "Phenomika", which produces equipment for phenotyping, allowing, among other things, to create digital twins of breeding, and other participants.
During one year of operation, the CUC was equipped with four additional cultivation units. Each of these units can grow more than 3,000 plants. The plants were modernized, including new open-type light elements, light sources now have spectrum adjustment, and it is possible to increase the share of far-red and near-infrared ranges, which are necessary to accelerate the change of development, flowering and maturation phases. Climate control has been improved, with a system that not only controls temperature, but also simulates the wind.
The center also conducts experiments with other plants: pea, soybean, wild soybean, cotton, potato, dandelion kok-sagyz, strawberry, redberry. Specialists are engaged in microclonal (vegetative) propagation of plants. The next stage is planned to be technical upgrading, expansion of the possibilities to adjust the spectral range of lighting and installation of an aeroponic plant cultivation unit.
About the Center for Accelerated Breeding
The Center for accelerated breeding is a so-called speed-breed chamber - a special room protected from daylight, equipped with a climate control system and special lamps simulating the entire spectrum of sunlight, a water purification system and an auto-irrigation system. The land for planting was brought from the fields of the Novosibirsk region.
Earlier, the director of the center told TASS that he also plans to develop a cotton variety adapted to Siberian conditions that matures only in warm climates. Scientists from the Samarkand State University in Uzbekistan will provide cotton seeds from the university's collection.