Using wild plants and their genetic diversity for development of novel crops in a changing climate

Agriculture faces several challenges when providing us with food and animals with feed. At the same time, it must withstand the ongoing changes in the climate and also be able to make its contribution to reduce the negative environmental impacts. The development of new “climate-smart crops” is a prerequisite for meeting these challenges and this is where our work comes in. By developing stress-tolerant and perennial cereals, we aim to contribute to a sustainable agriculture and improved food security. The plants that we are focusing on are barley and wheat and their wild relatives.

You can read more about our research in the following projects:

• Development of perennial cereals
• Development of breeding methods for the perennial forage grass timothy
• Wild relatives of cereals as genetic resources in breeding