Final Report Summary - OPTICHINA (Breeding to Optimise Chinese Agriculture)
Executive Summary:
Today, we are faced with the challenge of providing safe, nutritious and affordable food for the world's ever increasing population. To meet this challenge, careful management of land and a shift to systems that produce more from less is critical. Accelerated plant breeding for increased yield potential and better adaptation to abiotic stresses, all such as water stress and heat, together with more sustainable agronomical practices have become crucial.
OPTICHINA (Breeding to Optimise Chinese Agriculture) was a partnership between the European Union (EU) and China focused on crop breeding. The project was aimed to bridging the gap between crop breeding research activities carried out by European and Chinese researchers.
Top international scientists from both China and Europe were exploring new technologies such as molecular genetics and new phenotyping strategies, together with advanced statistical and bioinformatics tools that aim to improve the efficiency of crop breeding programmes. The scientists are also focused on improving and combining plant characteristics such as yield components with the aim of creating the optimal plant. Other focus areas include exploring abiotic stress resilience.
OPTICHINA involved advanced courses on influential topics such as Molecular and Germoplasm techniques, Phenotyping and Bioinformatics. OPTICHINA organised several workshops and conferences to bring researchers and end-users closer together. OPTICHINA awarded several fellowships (24 in total) for both Chinese and European researchers, for short training visits to research institutions. This contact has ensured the transfer of knowledge and technology and the continued implementation of best practices. It also builds long lasting links between Chinese and EU scientists working in plant breeding, molecular, genetic, crop physiology, bioinformatics and environmental research. Moreover a series of scientifically influential publications (23 papers in peer-review scientific journals) have been produced.
The project has engaged EU and Chinese researchers “in a fruitful manner”. The success of the cooperation is evident in the fact that both the University of Barcelona (Spain) and Rothamsted Research (United Kingdom) signed single Memorandums of Understanding (agreement) with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (China) in Beijing in June 2013. Recently (2014), Professor Martin Parry (PI of one of the OPTICHINA partners) has received a “National Friendship Award” from the Chinese Government. The award is the highest the Chinese Government honours to non-Chinese experts. The coordinator of the Project, Prof. José L. Araus, had been awarded with the same Price in 2008.
The above activities developed under the umbrella of OPTICHINA, together with the agreements achieved, have put the seal on future collaboration between China and Europe in finding new technologies, tools and approaches for continued improvements in crop breeding.
A web site (www.optichinagriculture.com) was implemented early after start of the project to provide a place of exchange of communications and information between the consortium members but also for external people interested in the scope of the project.
Project Context and Objectives:
Humans are dependent on crops for survival, and from the beginnings of agriculture have been energetically involved in developing crops that better serve their needs. In spite of the fact that scientific crop breeding has only existed for one century, it is a discipline that is developing very quickly and has been very successful multiplying the yields of major crops such as wheat and rice (e.g. Green Revolution) or maize (introduction of hybrids). Even during the last decades breeding has contributed approximately a 50% contribution to increasing the world's food crop production. However as the world's population continues to grow rapidly and becomes more demanding, the pressure on resources is increasing, whilst climate change poses further challenges. The balance between the supply and demand of the major food crops is fragile, fueling concerns for long-term global food security. In fact concerns about food security are increasing in the last years in view of the ongoing global (climate and social) changes. The challenges to food security from global change, sharply increasing food and feed demands, whereas increasing the frequency and severity of stresses, coupled with degradation and scarcity of natural resources, are indeed urgent and real. Crop production must double by 2050 to meet future production demands. The ability to achieve this increase represents a significant challenge to plant breeders. Crop yields must increase at a rate of 2.4% per year, yet the average rate of increase is only 1.3% with yields stagnating in up to 40% of land under cereal production. Therefore, crops with higher yield potential and more resistant to abiotic stress conditions are needed to address such challenges. This will be only achievable by speeding up the rate of breeding gains, in a context of more sustainable agriculture.
The need to accelerate plant breeding for increased yield potential and better adaptation to drought and other abiotic stresses is an issue of increasing urgency. The global population is facing a common challenge of providing safe, nutritious and affordable food, given the constraints of land, water, and energy and in the face of climate change. The sustainable exploitation of biological resources for a secure and healthy food supply, animal feed and a wide range of sustainable materials and technical products will require careful husbandry of land and a shift to systems that produce more from less in a sustainable manner. With this common goal, OPTICHINA (Breeding to Optimize Chinese Agriculture), a 3-years EU-China partnership initiative in crop breeding was launched in June of 2011. The opportunity of the project was evident since Europe is together with China the main economic entity at World scale. Moreover China is the largest country with a fast-growing economy and society under profound transformation, which includes increase needs for food and feed.
The major objective of crop breeding programs is to develop new genotypes that are genetically superior to those currently available for specific environments. To achieve this objective, breeders employ a range of selection methods and technologies. In that context molecular genetics and associated technologies have greatly contributed to our understanding of the inheritance of targeted traits in plant breeding, which in turn open new ways of improving the efficiency of breeding programs. High-throughput sequencing is a revolutionary technological innovation in DNA sequencing. This technology has the advantageous characteristics of extremely low cost single-base sequencing and overwhelmingly high data output. Molecular marker techniques are influencing the breeding process from parental selection and cross prediction, to introgression of known genes and population enhancement. Constraints in phenotyping capability currently limit our ability to dissect the genetics of quantitative traits, especially for those complex traits related to yield and stress tolerance. Development of effective field-based high-throughput phenotyping remains a bottleneck for future breeding advances. Crop phenotyping is a research area in rapid expansion, in which a wide variety of approaches is being explored, from high-throughput field phenotyping to the evaluation at the cellular level in vitro. More efficient crop phenotyping will be pivotal in the future to hasten the breeding pipeline and to take full advantage of the revolution in molecular techniques and bioinformatics. Thus improved phenotyping techniques will not only help to provide further success of conventional breeding for complex quantitative traits but also to the full implementation of molecular breeding, including mapping and other forward-genetics approaches, as well as transgenic breeding and other reverse-genetics methods such as tilling. Data processing, and new statistical tools and more powerful modelling, able to discriminate genotype variability, are also paramount. These and related new approaches will sustain the world's food productivity.
In the context of the above described challenges and opportunities is where OPTICHINA project emerges. OPTICHINA aimed to link the crop breeding research activities carried out by European and Chinese researchers. In the context of ongoing climate and social changes and the increasing challenges than these changes represent for the food security at Word level, OPTICHINA has focused specifically on research requirements to breeding for improved yield potential and resilience to abiotic stresses and sustainability of major herbaceous crops in both China and Europe. This Co-ordination Action has integrated Chinese and European scientists internationally recognized as experts in different areas around crop breeding and adaptation to major abiotic stresses and avenues to raise yield potential.
The specific objectives of the OPTICHINA initiative were:
• To support networks of European agricultural scientists working with China.
• To develop an inventory of experimental resources and datasets.
• To ensure adoption of existing knowledge and technology.
• To fund short training visits of Chinese researchers in other laboratories.
• To build links between research scientists working in molecular, genetic, bioinformatics and physiological, environmental research and the end users of their science.
• To build up future research topic propositions for the 7th and future FP’s.
Main partners of the Consortium are Universitat de Barcelona (UB Spain, acting as Coordinator), Rothamsted Research Limited (RR United Kingdom), Max Planck Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Wissenschatten E.V. (MPG Germany), John Innes Centre (JIC United Kingdom), Universitat de Lleida (UdL Spain), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS People's Republic of China) and China Agricultural University (CAU People's Republic of China). In addition as a members of the Steering Committee, Chinese seed companies (Tianmin Henan Seed Company, Lankao, Henan Province) and other agricultural research (Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan) and Academic (Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University, Yangling, Xian).
The project was distributed in 8 workpackages, namely:
WP1 Project Management. Overall management of the program, administrative matters and coordination activities.
WP2 OPTICHINA Website. Setting up and operation of the OPTICHINA website for all parties interested in Breeding to improve abiotic stress adaptation and yield potential in Chinese agriculture.
Specifically the website has promoted the different activities of OPTICHINA: workshops and fellowships, inventory of technology platforms, the international conference, publications.
WP3 Inventory of Resources. Creation of an inventory of technology platforms, germplasm, data sets, techniques, tools and strategies for all parties interested in Breeding to optimise adaptation to abiotic stresses and yield potential in Chinese agriculture.
WP4 Workshops. Workshop 1: Technology Platforms and Germplasm Profiling. Workshop 2: Phenotypic Profiling, Technology Transfer and Participatory Breeding. The overall objective of the workshops was to bring researchers and end users closer together to, ensure cooperation and collaboration between ongoing European projects (both from EC and National programmes) with Chinese projects concerned with crop improvement, thus giving added value to the existing EU investment in the International
WP5 Advanced Courses. Courses on the following topics were organized: Molecular Technology Platforms (ii) Phenotyping (iii) Germplasm Profiling and (iv) Bioinformatics.
WP6 Training Fellowships. The Co-ordination action aimed to provide fellowships to enable students and young post doctoral as well as senior researchers, interested in Breeding to improve adaptation to abiotic stresses and yield potential in Chinese agriculture, to undertake training either in a new discipline or in a new aspect of their own field other research groups. An additional number of fellowships were covered directly by CAAS own funding sources.
WP7 Scientific and Technical Publications. The objective was to provide visibility to this Co-ordination action at scientific level while reaching too politicians, decision makers and heads of SME.
WP8 International Conference Objectives. An International Conference on “Speeding Plant Breeding in Chinese Agriculture through Europe/China partnership” was organized in China at the end of the OPTICHINA project. The Conference discussed the risks, challenges and opportunities for Chinese Agriculture of a more efficient Plant Breeding and the way to achieve it.
Project Results:
Website and Inventory of Resources
The OPTICHINA website was fully developed during the first half year of the project, and since then it has been regularly updated for announcements of the different workshops, conferences and advanced courses, inventory of resources and training fellowships. The website will remain active for some time after the end of the project. More information about the project may be accessed through the OPTICHINA website - Optichinagriculture: http://www.optichinagriculture.com.
Concerning the Inventory of Resources, a list of available Research Platforms, Germplasm, Mapping Populations, Data Sets, Techniques, Tools, Protocols and the website to obtain further details for each entry have been created and it is accessible through http://www.optichinagriculture.com The web of OPTICHINA will be maintained in the next future
Workshops and Conferences
During the period covered by the First Periodic Report, the OPTICHINA consortium organized two workshops:
1.- China-EU Workshop, Technology Platforms and Germplasm Profiling, held in Beijing, at the CAAS headquarters, Beijing , June 20-22, 2011. The first project workshop was held shortly after the launch of the project, and focused on new technologies and methods in crop molecular breeding: CAAS invited 39 guests and speakers, and 93 participants. Two special issues were published in Journal of Integrative Plant Biology. The editorial of these issues (Parry et al. 2012 J. Integr. Plant Biol. 54 summarizes the main results of the Workshop, introducing the relevance and multidisciplinarity of the topics addressed. A number of presentations during this workshop were transformed into manuscripts published in the mentioned journal.
2.- China – EU Workshop, on Phenotypic Profiling and Technology Transfer on CropBreeding, held in Barcelona (at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona) during September 17-21, 2012.
The editorial of the special issue (Araus et al. 2014 J. Integr. Plant Biol. 56, 422–424) summarizes the main results of this Workshop, highlighting the importance of the topics about phenotyping and related aspects tackled in the Workshop. More than 50 people from different European and Chinese institutions attended this second workshop. Most of them, gave and oral speech, in different areas related with phenotyping traits and tools for plant breeding under stress conditions, molecular breeding, modeling phenotypic data analysis etc. It is worth to mention that also assisted the heads of European companies developing phenotyping technology (Dirk Vandenhirtz from LemnaTec GmbH and Antón Hernández Albá from Airelectronics) as well as the coordinator of the European project – network dealing with phenotyping (Dr.Fabio Fiorani, The European Plant Phenotyping Network). The Workshop had an important attendance from Spanish researchers thanks to a fellowship from the Spanish Government to support this activity.
During the period covered by the Second Periodic Report, the OPTICHINA consortium organized two additional workshops:
3-: The Combined China-EU-Australia Workshop on Phenotyping for Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Water Use Efficiency in Crop Breeding. Workshop organized by the Norwest Agricultural and Forestry University (Yangling, Xi’An, China), from 10-13 May 2013 and leaded by Prof Hu Yingang, member of the Steering Committee of OPTICHINA. Near 20 international researchers from Europe, Australia, USA, together with near 100 Chinese researchers and students attended the Workshop.
4.-: OPTICHINA International Conference held in Beijing (at the Headquarters of CAAS, Beijing) during 26th -29th May 2014. This Conference was attended by more than 100 researchers from Europe, China and other countries. A special issue in the “The Crop Journal” is in process and it is scheduled that will published during the first quarter of 2015. Conference Program was already included as additional information in the second report.
Further information regarding programs, together with the presentation where permission from authors was granted, of the workshop at the NAFU and the CAAS were provided as attachments to the Second Periodic Report.
Advanced Courses
• The first course on Genomic Technologies Platform was developed in UK by Partner 2 (RR) with the support of Partner 4 (John Innes Center, JIC)
• The second course on Phenotyping was reconverted as a larger Workshop on Phenotyping, as explained above. The title of this was “The Combined China-EU-Australia Workshop on Phenotyping for Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Water Use Efficiency in Crop Breeding.”
• The third course on Metabolic Profiling was held in the Max Plank Institute (P3, MPG), of Golm Potsdam, Germany).
• The fourth course, on Bioinformatics was developed in China during winter 2014, organized by the CAAS (P6) and CAU (P7).
Training Fellowships
Concerning the fellowships, three rounds of calls (deadlines last quarter of 2011, 2012 and 2013) were launched and a total 24 fellowships approved. Host institutions were different European and Chinese research institutions. Additional information is provided in the intermediate reports.
Publications
As indicated above Optichina has produced two special issues in the Journal of Integrative Plant Biology and a special issue for The Crop Journal is now under preparation, for papers presented at the different OPTICHINA workshops. This has already resulted in two special sections in Journal of Integrative Plant Biology focused on Methods of Crop Molecular Breeding (vol. 54) and a further section on High Throughput Phenotyping (vol. 56) (see below):
JIPB, Vol 54, Issues 4-5: Editorial paper: Parry, M. A. J., Wang, J. and Araus, J. L. (2012). New technologies, tools and approaches for improving crop breeding. Journal of Integrative Plant Biology 54, 210-214.
JIPB, Vol 56, Issues 4-5: Editorial paper: Araus, J.L. Li, J., Parry, M.A.J. Wang, J. 2014. Phenotyping and other breeding approaches for a New Green Revolution. Journal of Integrative Plant Biology 56, 422–424.
In addition a relevant review paper was published in Food and Energy Security, Hawkesford, M.J. Araus, J.L. Park, R., Calderini, D., Miralles, D., Shen, T., Zhang, J., Parry M.A.J. 2013. Prospects of doubling global wheat yields. Food and Energy Security 2: 34-48. Unfortunately, this paper has not been included in list of publications because the online form of the Participant Portal at ECAS found some problems with the identification of DOI, journal name or ISSN. This paper is provided as an attached PDF.
The complete (except the paper mentioned in the previous paragraph) list of publications is included in the 4. 2 Use and dissemination of foreground, section of this report. A discrepancy between the number of publications in this table (22) and the number mentioned in this report (23) has been explained above.
In addition and special Issue in the journal “The Crop Journal” is now in process
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/the-crop-journal/call-for-papers/breeding-to-optimize-agriculture-in-a-changing-world/
External Cooperation
Concerning co-operation with other projects and programs, a huge number of contacts have been detailed in the technical report of the first period, mainly established with some international companies with great expertise for example in phenotyping, as well as with the 7th FP European project: The European Plant Phenotyping Network.
Concerning financial management of the project, the Spanish Government granted a fellowship to support some additional activities of OPTICHINA, mainly the organization of the second workshop held in Barcelona.
Potential Impact:
The OPTICHINA’s project expectation was to address the essence of the Euro-Chinese partnership by meeting the objective of the newly integrated sustainable development of agriculture and its environmental dimension. A major concept defining sustainability is a holistic one which aims to integrate the various experts of the scientific community together with all the possible stakeholders. By doing so one ensures that the problems are addressed with a more global view that integrates the economic, political and societal dimensions. Specifically, the project has been targeting all parties interested in Breeding to improve abiotic stress adaptation and yield potential in Chinese agriculture including: research scientists, breeders, seed companies, consultants, agronomists, extension-service specialists, politicians, policy makers, NGOs, farmers and other stake holders. The project has been facilitating cooperation and collaboration and providing a valuable resource. The aim is that this will be continued after the end of the project.
Concerning the expected final results and their potential impacts it is forecasted that the different stakeholders interested in the information and knowledge that has been disseminated through the project could take profit of those publications, techniques, applications produced and gathered through the project. For example the Advanced Courses facilitated young people and interested researchers to be in contact with last updated techniques in different areas of breeding science and their interaction as well as their practical applications and potential technical outcomes. Therefore the advanced courses went beyond the formation nature of them, given that they facilitated future information exchange of Plant Breeding scientists from China and Europe. The project coordinator and CAAS members can certify a great successful profit from the Training Fellowships that have been granted during the whole period of the project, with three calls.
Overall the workshops, advanced courses and website were used to develop themes, networks and ideas arising from this measure towards incorporation into the HORIZON2020. In fact the consortium has identified already existing networks on drought and other abiotic stresses in China in order to cluster efforts facing the HORIZON2020. Actually the OPTICHINA’s contact researchers at CAAS and at the NWAFU (both from China) will participate in a proposal under preparation that will be submitted for the next call (beginning of 2015) of HORIZON2020 and that will be coordinated by the UdL team (Spain) together with the participation of all the other European partners of OPTICHINA and other European researchers.
We have prepared different revision and opinion papers that have been published aiming to summarize in a comprehensive but realistic manner the pros and cons of the different breeding and other agricultural research strategies to cope with present and future climatic and social challenges. While these papers pretend to provide policy makers and decision makers with digested scientific information, these papers are being really influential. Thus for example and based on the statistics from Google Scholar the following publications:
• Cabrera-Bosquet et al. 2012 ‘High-throughput Phenotyping and Genomic Selection: The Frontiers of Crop Breeding Converge’ Journal Integrative Plant Biology 54: 312–320,
• Masuka et al. 2012. Phenotyping for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Maize. Journal Integrative Plant Biology 54, 238–249
• Parry and Hawkesford 2012. An integrated approach to crop genetic improvement. Journal
• Integrative Plant Biology 54, 250–259.
• Hawkesford et al. 2013. Prospects of doubling global wheat yields. Food and Energy Security 2: 34-48.
have gotten until the Second Report date (first October 2014) 36, 23, 19 and 18 citations, respectively. Additional revision papers are expected to be published in the Special Issue of the The Crop Journal (scheduled for publication during the first part of 2015). .
During the Conference a set of conclusions were achieved about the current and future challenges facing the Chinese and European agriculture and the ways to cope them. As a result of a consultation across the attendants a list of recommendations for future research priorities on agriculture have been formulated. These recommendations have been structured using the format of the Conference sessions:
a) Defining and Protecting Yield Potential – Traits and Genes
• What are the major achievable approaches to increasing/maintaining yield potential?
• Short term: – Close yield gap between yield potential and farmer’s yields – agronomic change, e.g. conservation agriculture
• Long term:– Combine genomics with physiology, more effective breeding systems
• Short-Long term – Improve time for cultivar delivery (speed the release of new cultivars)
• Boost photosynthesis
o Short term: – canopy architecture
o Long term – change photosynthesis pathways (e.g. C4 wheat, C4 rice…)
o Understand role of source v sink in efforts to boost photosynthesis
• Long term: – better root systems - improve resource capture
• What are the attributes of current High Yielding environments?
o Understand temperature/radiation interactions
• Better understand crop sequence effects (phonological adjustment..)
• Keep raising sink strength (kernel number, kernel weight)
• Long term: – maintain harvest index as total biomass raised
• The respiration black box needs to be opened
o More-efficient respiration pathways
• Maintain/update biotic tolerance in the breeding pipeline
• Collaborate with the past and learn from past experience (digging in the historical data sources)
• Fruiting efficiency
b) . High Throughput Precision Phenotyping in the Field
• What are the most important secondary traits that can be phenotyped with high-throughput precision which may also contribute to the improvement of yield?
• Determine the priority target environments and context for given trait
• Determine when CE-phenotyping is useful (because a greater heritability, cheaper measure, higher throughput) may be useful for some traits (density-independent?)
• Hyperspectral and other high throughput remote sensing techniques
c) . Molecular Technologies in Modern Breeding
• How could we go from molecular lab to the practical application in plant breeding?
• Bridge gap between molecular biologists and breeders
• Cheaper molecular techniques – cost per ‘assay’/marker. Need POC and cheaper, high throughput platforms for QTL identification.
• Marker Assisted Selection still a ‘concept’ in public breeding in China and elsewhere (i.e. need to deliver clear results when breeding for yield, stress adaptation and any quantitative trait in general). Breeders’ (‘s) chip packed with known key markers that ‘all’ breeders need to select for.
d) Models of Ideal Ideotype Designs
• Learn from other similar species or even wild relatives. For example in case of small grain cereals the plant ideotype for high yield potential and/or high yield performance under the drought condition of plants (or any specific crop) should be like Triticale (even if be perhaps a bit shorter) for HYP.
• Improved resource capture in both environments (“optimal” and “water stressed“
• As CO2 resource is becoming more available (due to the rising in CO2) – match other resources (e.g. nutrients such as N) to exploit this.
• Greater lodging tolerance to raise plant height, if plant height is limiting biomass growth
• Less water, higher temps, more-variable environments – need much-improved WUE (at all scales: from the agronomical to the leaf one)
• Do we need leaf sheaths – find something else to hold up leaves!
e) Data Analysis, Management and Bioinformatics
• What should breeders do with the huge amount of phenotypic and genotypic data?
• Pressure phenotypers to deliver data in a easily-useable form
• User-friendly software – integrated, open, cloud-processed
f) National Challenges and Opportunities: the Case of China
• How should China handle the global change challenges?
• Use simulation models to predict crop adaptation as climate changes
• Policy change to limit climate change drivers and effects – China is ¼ of world population
• Water use efficiency at different levels is the key problem
• Tactical (rather than indiscriminate) N management
• In case of crops like maize – adapt Chinese hybrids to greater plant density
g) OPTICHINA Fellowship and Young Scientist Forum
• What are you going to say about the 3-yr OPTICHINA project as it concludes?
• Ripper! – let’s have another one!!
• More China funding for next one?
• Great having Chinese students in European labs, for students and hosts.
• Hosts learn what hard work means.
• Students learn different approaches to science from the ‘Chinese’ view.
• Involving multiple institutes breeds greater interchange.
Potential Impact of OPTICHINA at the social level is being also translated to other aspects:
Three seminars were held in Kaifeng (Henan province, China), at the Headquarters of Tianin Henan Seed Company (an associated member of the OPTICHINA consortium, although not a full member) on May 2011, May 2013 and 2014. These Seminars have not been included in 4.2. Section table because the type of activities offered there were not directly applicable to them. All three seminars were addressed to respond ways to improve wheat productivity. Those seminars included field visits to Lankao field station and headquarters of the Henan Tianmin Seed Company and consultations. Local authorities, entrepreneurs, farmers, decision makers, and research managers were invited to attend the seminars.
Another Seminar about the ways to improve wheat productivity, together with field visit and consultation was held with Full Professors of the Norwest Agricultural and Forestry University, in Yangling (Xi’an province) on May 2013. Local entrepreneurs, farmers, decision makers, research managers were also invited to attend the Seminar. In addition, some Australian researchers were also invited, since the Third workshop mentioned above was organized in parallel.
Another seminar on ways to improve maize productivity, combined with field visits and consultation, was held at the Yunnan Academy for Agricultural Sciences (associate member of the OPTICHINA board), in Kunming (Yunnan Province), in August 2011. Local Researchers, students, farmers and research managers were invited to attend.
Prof. Martin Parry, PI at P2 (Rothamsted Research) have been granted with the Friendship Award (2014 edition), which is the highest distinction of the Peoples Republic of China to the tasks of foreign experts helping to the social, cultural, scientific development of China. This Award had been achieved before (2008 edition) by Prof. José Luis Araus, project coordinator and PI at P1 (University of Barcelona).
http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/news/professor-martin-parry-has-received-%E2%80%9Cnational-friendship-award%E2%80%9D-chinese-government
Two single Memorandums of Understanding were signed, at the 4th Global Forum of Leaders for Agricultural Science and Technology (June 2013, Beijing, China) between the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and both the Deputy President for Research of the University of Barcelona (P1, Spain, represented by Maria Dolors Serret) and the Director of Rothamsted Research (P2, UK, represented by Martin Parry).
In addition, the European Commission has disseminated in efficient manner information about OPTICHINA
http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/article_en.cfm?artid=31956
http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/news/international-horizons-crop-breeding
Another document from EC was an article included in a review published in 2013 by Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, under the topic Biotechnologies, Agriculture, Food - Knowledge-based Bioeconomy. The title of the review was “FP7 projects with China in the area of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology research”. A PDF is provided.
List of Websites:
http://www.optichinagriculture.com
Coordinator:
Dr. Jose Luis Araus (jaraus@ub.edu)
Dr. Jordi Bort (jordi.bort@ub.edu)
Dr. Maria Dolors Serret (dserret@ub.edu)
Today, we are faced with the challenge of providing safe, nutritious and affordable food for the world's ever increasing population. To meet this challenge, careful management of land and a shift to systems that produce more from less is critical. Accelerated plant breeding for increased yield potential and better adaptation to abiotic stresses, all such as water stress and heat, together with more sustainable agronomical practices have become crucial.
OPTICHINA (Breeding to Optimise Chinese Agriculture) was a partnership between the European Union (EU) and China focused on crop breeding. The project was aimed to bridging the gap between crop breeding research activities carried out by European and Chinese researchers.
Top international scientists from both China and Europe were exploring new technologies such as molecular genetics and new phenotyping strategies, together with advanced statistical and bioinformatics tools that aim to improve the efficiency of crop breeding programmes. The scientists are also focused on improving and combining plant characteristics such as yield components with the aim of creating the optimal plant. Other focus areas include exploring abiotic stress resilience.
OPTICHINA involved advanced courses on influential topics such as Molecular and Germoplasm techniques, Phenotyping and Bioinformatics. OPTICHINA organised several workshops and conferences to bring researchers and end-users closer together. OPTICHINA awarded several fellowships (24 in total) for both Chinese and European researchers, for short training visits to research institutions. This contact has ensured the transfer of knowledge and technology and the continued implementation of best practices. It also builds long lasting links between Chinese and EU scientists working in plant breeding, molecular, genetic, crop physiology, bioinformatics and environmental research. Moreover a series of scientifically influential publications (23 papers in peer-review scientific journals) have been produced.
The project has engaged EU and Chinese researchers “in a fruitful manner”. The success of the cooperation is evident in the fact that both the University of Barcelona (Spain) and Rothamsted Research (United Kingdom) signed single Memorandums of Understanding (agreement) with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (China) in Beijing in June 2013. Recently (2014), Professor Martin Parry (PI of one of the OPTICHINA partners) has received a “National Friendship Award” from the Chinese Government. The award is the highest the Chinese Government honours to non-Chinese experts. The coordinator of the Project, Prof. José L. Araus, had been awarded with the same Price in 2008.
The above activities developed under the umbrella of OPTICHINA, together with the agreements achieved, have put the seal on future collaboration between China and Europe in finding new technologies, tools and approaches for continued improvements in crop breeding.
A web site (www.optichinagriculture.com) was implemented early after start of the project to provide a place of exchange of communications and information between the consortium members but also for external people interested in the scope of the project.
Project Context and Objectives:
Humans are dependent on crops for survival, and from the beginnings of agriculture have been energetically involved in developing crops that better serve their needs. In spite of the fact that scientific crop breeding has only existed for one century, it is a discipline that is developing very quickly and has been very successful multiplying the yields of major crops such as wheat and rice (e.g. Green Revolution) or maize (introduction of hybrids). Even during the last decades breeding has contributed approximately a 50% contribution to increasing the world's food crop production. However as the world's population continues to grow rapidly and becomes more demanding, the pressure on resources is increasing, whilst climate change poses further challenges. The balance between the supply and demand of the major food crops is fragile, fueling concerns for long-term global food security. In fact concerns about food security are increasing in the last years in view of the ongoing global (climate and social) changes. The challenges to food security from global change, sharply increasing food and feed demands, whereas increasing the frequency and severity of stresses, coupled with degradation and scarcity of natural resources, are indeed urgent and real. Crop production must double by 2050 to meet future production demands. The ability to achieve this increase represents a significant challenge to plant breeders. Crop yields must increase at a rate of 2.4% per year, yet the average rate of increase is only 1.3% with yields stagnating in up to 40% of land under cereal production. Therefore, crops with higher yield potential and more resistant to abiotic stress conditions are needed to address such challenges. This will be only achievable by speeding up the rate of breeding gains, in a context of more sustainable agriculture.
The need to accelerate plant breeding for increased yield potential and better adaptation to drought and other abiotic stresses is an issue of increasing urgency. The global population is facing a common challenge of providing safe, nutritious and affordable food, given the constraints of land, water, and energy and in the face of climate change. The sustainable exploitation of biological resources for a secure and healthy food supply, animal feed and a wide range of sustainable materials and technical products will require careful husbandry of land and a shift to systems that produce more from less in a sustainable manner. With this common goal, OPTICHINA (Breeding to Optimize Chinese Agriculture), a 3-years EU-China partnership initiative in crop breeding was launched in June of 2011. The opportunity of the project was evident since Europe is together with China the main economic entity at World scale. Moreover China is the largest country with a fast-growing economy and society under profound transformation, which includes increase needs for food and feed.
The major objective of crop breeding programs is to develop new genotypes that are genetically superior to those currently available for specific environments. To achieve this objective, breeders employ a range of selection methods and technologies. In that context molecular genetics and associated technologies have greatly contributed to our understanding of the inheritance of targeted traits in plant breeding, which in turn open new ways of improving the efficiency of breeding programs. High-throughput sequencing is a revolutionary technological innovation in DNA sequencing. This technology has the advantageous characteristics of extremely low cost single-base sequencing and overwhelmingly high data output. Molecular marker techniques are influencing the breeding process from parental selection and cross prediction, to introgression of known genes and population enhancement. Constraints in phenotyping capability currently limit our ability to dissect the genetics of quantitative traits, especially for those complex traits related to yield and stress tolerance. Development of effective field-based high-throughput phenotyping remains a bottleneck for future breeding advances. Crop phenotyping is a research area in rapid expansion, in which a wide variety of approaches is being explored, from high-throughput field phenotyping to the evaluation at the cellular level in vitro. More efficient crop phenotyping will be pivotal in the future to hasten the breeding pipeline and to take full advantage of the revolution in molecular techniques and bioinformatics. Thus improved phenotyping techniques will not only help to provide further success of conventional breeding for complex quantitative traits but also to the full implementation of molecular breeding, including mapping and other forward-genetics approaches, as well as transgenic breeding and other reverse-genetics methods such as tilling. Data processing, and new statistical tools and more powerful modelling, able to discriminate genotype variability, are also paramount. These and related new approaches will sustain the world's food productivity.
In the context of the above described challenges and opportunities is where OPTICHINA project emerges. OPTICHINA aimed to link the crop breeding research activities carried out by European and Chinese researchers. In the context of ongoing climate and social changes and the increasing challenges than these changes represent for the food security at Word level, OPTICHINA has focused specifically on research requirements to breeding for improved yield potential and resilience to abiotic stresses and sustainability of major herbaceous crops in both China and Europe. This Co-ordination Action has integrated Chinese and European scientists internationally recognized as experts in different areas around crop breeding and adaptation to major abiotic stresses and avenues to raise yield potential.
The specific objectives of the OPTICHINA initiative were:
• To support networks of European agricultural scientists working with China.
• To develop an inventory of experimental resources and datasets.
• To ensure adoption of existing knowledge and technology.
• To fund short training visits of Chinese researchers in other laboratories.
• To build links between research scientists working in molecular, genetic, bioinformatics and physiological, environmental research and the end users of their science.
• To build up future research topic propositions for the 7th and future FP’s.
Main partners of the Consortium are Universitat de Barcelona (UB Spain, acting as Coordinator), Rothamsted Research Limited (RR United Kingdom), Max Planck Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Wissenschatten E.V. (MPG Germany), John Innes Centre (JIC United Kingdom), Universitat de Lleida (UdL Spain), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS People's Republic of China) and China Agricultural University (CAU People's Republic of China). In addition as a members of the Steering Committee, Chinese seed companies (Tianmin Henan Seed Company, Lankao, Henan Province) and other agricultural research (Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan) and Academic (Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University, Yangling, Xian).
The project was distributed in 8 workpackages, namely:
WP1 Project Management. Overall management of the program, administrative matters and coordination activities.
WP2 OPTICHINA Website. Setting up and operation of the OPTICHINA website for all parties interested in Breeding to improve abiotic stress adaptation and yield potential in Chinese agriculture.
Specifically the website has promoted the different activities of OPTICHINA: workshops and fellowships, inventory of technology platforms, the international conference, publications.
WP3 Inventory of Resources. Creation of an inventory of technology platforms, germplasm, data sets, techniques, tools and strategies for all parties interested in Breeding to optimise adaptation to abiotic stresses and yield potential in Chinese agriculture.
WP4 Workshops. Workshop 1: Technology Platforms and Germplasm Profiling. Workshop 2: Phenotypic Profiling, Technology Transfer and Participatory Breeding. The overall objective of the workshops was to bring researchers and end users closer together to, ensure cooperation and collaboration between ongoing European projects (both from EC and National programmes) with Chinese projects concerned with crop improvement, thus giving added value to the existing EU investment in the International
WP5 Advanced Courses. Courses on the following topics were organized: Molecular Technology Platforms (ii) Phenotyping (iii) Germplasm Profiling and (iv) Bioinformatics.
WP6 Training Fellowships. The Co-ordination action aimed to provide fellowships to enable students and young post doctoral as well as senior researchers, interested in Breeding to improve adaptation to abiotic stresses and yield potential in Chinese agriculture, to undertake training either in a new discipline or in a new aspect of their own field other research groups. An additional number of fellowships were covered directly by CAAS own funding sources.
WP7 Scientific and Technical Publications. The objective was to provide visibility to this Co-ordination action at scientific level while reaching too politicians, decision makers and heads of SME.
WP8 International Conference Objectives. An International Conference on “Speeding Plant Breeding in Chinese Agriculture through Europe/China partnership” was organized in China at the end of the OPTICHINA project. The Conference discussed the risks, challenges and opportunities for Chinese Agriculture of a more efficient Plant Breeding and the way to achieve it.
Project Results:
Website and Inventory of Resources
The OPTICHINA website was fully developed during the first half year of the project, and since then it has been regularly updated for announcements of the different workshops, conferences and advanced courses, inventory of resources and training fellowships. The website will remain active for some time after the end of the project. More information about the project may be accessed through the OPTICHINA website - Optichinagriculture: http://www.optichinagriculture.com.
Concerning the Inventory of Resources, a list of available Research Platforms, Germplasm, Mapping Populations, Data Sets, Techniques, Tools, Protocols and the website to obtain further details for each entry have been created and it is accessible through http://www.optichinagriculture.com The web of OPTICHINA will be maintained in the next future
Workshops and Conferences
During the period covered by the First Periodic Report, the OPTICHINA consortium organized two workshops:
1.- China-EU Workshop, Technology Platforms and Germplasm Profiling, held in Beijing, at the CAAS headquarters, Beijing , June 20-22, 2011. The first project workshop was held shortly after the launch of the project, and focused on new technologies and methods in crop molecular breeding: CAAS invited 39 guests and speakers, and 93 participants. Two special issues were published in Journal of Integrative Plant Biology. The editorial of these issues (Parry et al. 2012 J. Integr. Plant Biol. 54 summarizes the main results of the Workshop, introducing the relevance and multidisciplinarity of the topics addressed. A number of presentations during this workshop were transformed into manuscripts published in the mentioned journal.
2.- China – EU Workshop, on Phenotypic Profiling and Technology Transfer on CropBreeding, held in Barcelona (at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona) during September 17-21, 2012.
The editorial of the special issue (Araus et al. 2014 J. Integr. Plant Biol. 56, 422–424) summarizes the main results of this Workshop, highlighting the importance of the topics about phenotyping and related aspects tackled in the Workshop. More than 50 people from different European and Chinese institutions attended this second workshop. Most of them, gave and oral speech, in different areas related with phenotyping traits and tools for plant breeding under stress conditions, molecular breeding, modeling phenotypic data analysis etc. It is worth to mention that also assisted the heads of European companies developing phenotyping technology (Dirk Vandenhirtz from LemnaTec GmbH and Antón Hernández Albá from Airelectronics) as well as the coordinator of the European project – network dealing with phenotyping (Dr.Fabio Fiorani, The European Plant Phenotyping Network). The Workshop had an important attendance from Spanish researchers thanks to a fellowship from the Spanish Government to support this activity.
During the period covered by the Second Periodic Report, the OPTICHINA consortium organized two additional workshops:
3-: The Combined China-EU-Australia Workshop on Phenotyping for Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Water Use Efficiency in Crop Breeding. Workshop organized by the Norwest Agricultural and Forestry University (Yangling, Xi’An, China), from 10-13 May 2013 and leaded by Prof Hu Yingang, member of the Steering Committee of OPTICHINA. Near 20 international researchers from Europe, Australia, USA, together with near 100 Chinese researchers and students attended the Workshop.
4.-: OPTICHINA International Conference held in Beijing (at the Headquarters of CAAS, Beijing) during 26th -29th May 2014. This Conference was attended by more than 100 researchers from Europe, China and other countries. A special issue in the “The Crop Journal” is in process and it is scheduled that will published during the first quarter of 2015. Conference Program was already included as additional information in the second report.
Further information regarding programs, together with the presentation where permission from authors was granted, of the workshop at the NAFU and the CAAS were provided as attachments to the Second Periodic Report.
Advanced Courses
• The first course on Genomic Technologies Platform was developed in UK by Partner 2 (RR) with the support of Partner 4 (John Innes Center, JIC)
• The second course on Phenotyping was reconverted as a larger Workshop on Phenotyping, as explained above. The title of this was “The Combined China-EU-Australia Workshop on Phenotyping for Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Water Use Efficiency in Crop Breeding.”
• The third course on Metabolic Profiling was held in the Max Plank Institute (P3, MPG), of Golm Potsdam, Germany).
• The fourth course, on Bioinformatics was developed in China during winter 2014, organized by the CAAS (P6) and CAU (P7).
Training Fellowships
Concerning the fellowships, three rounds of calls (deadlines last quarter of 2011, 2012 and 2013) were launched and a total 24 fellowships approved. Host institutions were different European and Chinese research institutions. Additional information is provided in the intermediate reports.
Publications
As indicated above Optichina has produced two special issues in the Journal of Integrative Plant Biology and a special issue for The Crop Journal is now under preparation, for papers presented at the different OPTICHINA workshops. This has already resulted in two special sections in Journal of Integrative Plant Biology focused on Methods of Crop Molecular Breeding (vol. 54) and a further section on High Throughput Phenotyping (vol. 56) (see below):
JIPB, Vol 54, Issues 4-5: Editorial paper: Parry, M. A. J., Wang, J. and Araus, J. L. (2012). New technologies, tools and approaches for improving crop breeding. Journal of Integrative Plant Biology 54, 210-214.
JIPB, Vol 56, Issues 4-5: Editorial paper: Araus, J.L. Li, J., Parry, M.A.J. Wang, J. 2014. Phenotyping and other breeding approaches for a New Green Revolution. Journal of Integrative Plant Biology 56, 422–424.
In addition a relevant review paper was published in Food and Energy Security, Hawkesford, M.J. Araus, J.L. Park, R., Calderini, D., Miralles, D., Shen, T., Zhang, J., Parry M.A.J. 2013. Prospects of doubling global wheat yields. Food and Energy Security 2: 34-48. Unfortunately, this paper has not been included in list of publications because the online form of the Participant Portal at ECAS found some problems with the identification of DOI, journal name or ISSN. This paper is provided as an attached PDF.
The complete (except the paper mentioned in the previous paragraph) list of publications is included in the 4. 2 Use and dissemination of foreground, section of this report. A discrepancy between the number of publications in this table (22) and the number mentioned in this report (23) has been explained above.
In addition and special Issue in the journal “The Crop Journal” is now in process
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/the-crop-journal/call-for-papers/breeding-to-optimize-agriculture-in-a-changing-world/
External Cooperation
Concerning co-operation with other projects and programs, a huge number of contacts have been detailed in the technical report of the first period, mainly established with some international companies with great expertise for example in phenotyping, as well as with the 7th FP European project: The European Plant Phenotyping Network.
Concerning financial management of the project, the Spanish Government granted a fellowship to support some additional activities of OPTICHINA, mainly the organization of the second workshop held in Barcelona.
Potential Impact:
The OPTICHINA’s project expectation was to address the essence of the Euro-Chinese partnership by meeting the objective of the newly integrated sustainable development of agriculture and its environmental dimension. A major concept defining sustainability is a holistic one which aims to integrate the various experts of the scientific community together with all the possible stakeholders. By doing so one ensures that the problems are addressed with a more global view that integrates the economic, political and societal dimensions. Specifically, the project has been targeting all parties interested in Breeding to improve abiotic stress adaptation and yield potential in Chinese agriculture including: research scientists, breeders, seed companies, consultants, agronomists, extension-service specialists, politicians, policy makers, NGOs, farmers and other stake holders. The project has been facilitating cooperation and collaboration and providing a valuable resource. The aim is that this will be continued after the end of the project.
Concerning the expected final results and their potential impacts it is forecasted that the different stakeholders interested in the information and knowledge that has been disseminated through the project could take profit of those publications, techniques, applications produced and gathered through the project. For example the Advanced Courses facilitated young people and interested researchers to be in contact with last updated techniques in different areas of breeding science and their interaction as well as their practical applications and potential technical outcomes. Therefore the advanced courses went beyond the formation nature of them, given that they facilitated future information exchange of Plant Breeding scientists from China and Europe. The project coordinator and CAAS members can certify a great successful profit from the Training Fellowships that have been granted during the whole period of the project, with three calls.
Overall the workshops, advanced courses and website were used to develop themes, networks and ideas arising from this measure towards incorporation into the HORIZON2020. In fact the consortium has identified already existing networks on drought and other abiotic stresses in China in order to cluster efforts facing the HORIZON2020. Actually the OPTICHINA’s contact researchers at CAAS and at the NWAFU (both from China) will participate in a proposal under preparation that will be submitted for the next call (beginning of 2015) of HORIZON2020 and that will be coordinated by the UdL team (Spain) together with the participation of all the other European partners of OPTICHINA and other European researchers.
We have prepared different revision and opinion papers that have been published aiming to summarize in a comprehensive but realistic manner the pros and cons of the different breeding and other agricultural research strategies to cope with present and future climatic and social challenges. While these papers pretend to provide policy makers and decision makers with digested scientific information, these papers are being really influential. Thus for example and based on the statistics from Google Scholar the following publications:
• Cabrera-Bosquet et al. 2012 ‘High-throughput Phenotyping and Genomic Selection: The Frontiers of Crop Breeding Converge’ Journal Integrative Plant Biology 54: 312–320,
• Masuka et al. 2012. Phenotyping for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Maize. Journal Integrative Plant Biology 54, 238–249
• Parry and Hawkesford 2012. An integrated approach to crop genetic improvement. Journal
• Integrative Plant Biology 54, 250–259.
• Hawkesford et al. 2013. Prospects of doubling global wheat yields. Food and Energy Security 2: 34-48.
have gotten until the Second Report date (first October 2014) 36, 23, 19 and 18 citations, respectively. Additional revision papers are expected to be published in the Special Issue of the The Crop Journal (scheduled for publication during the first part of 2015). .
During the Conference a set of conclusions were achieved about the current and future challenges facing the Chinese and European agriculture and the ways to cope them. As a result of a consultation across the attendants a list of recommendations for future research priorities on agriculture have been formulated. These recommendations have been structured using the format of the Conference sessions:
a) Defining and Protecting Yield Potential – Traits and Genes
• What are the major achievable approaches to increasing/maintaining yield potential?
• Short term: – Close yield gap between yield potential and farmer’s yields – agronomic change, e.g. conservation agriculture
• Long term:– Combine genomics with physiology, more effective breeding systems
• Short-Long term – Improve time for cultivar delivery (speed the release of new cultivars)
• Boost photosynthesis
o Short term: – canopy architecture
o Long term – change photosynthesis pathways (e.g. C4 wheat, C4 rice…)
o Understand role of source v sink in efforts to boost photosynthesis
• Long term: – better root systems - improve resource capture
• What are the attributes of current High Yielding environments?
o Understand temperature/radiation interactions
• Better understand crop sequence effects (phonological adjustment..)
• Keep raising sink strength (kernel number, kernel weight)
• Long term: – maintain harvest index as total biomass raised
• The respiration black box needs to be opened
o More-efficient respiration pathways
• Maintain/update biotic tolerance in the breeding pipeline
• Collaborate with the past and learn from past experience (digging in the historical data sources)
• Fruiting efficiency
b) . High Throughput Precision Phenotyping in the Field
• What are the most important secondary traits that can be phenotyped with high-throughput precision which may also contribute to the improvement of yield?
• Determine the priority target environments and context for given trait
• Determine when CE-phenotyping is useful (because a greater heritability, cheaper measure, higher throughput) may be useful for some traits (density-independent?)
• Hyperspectral and other high throughput remote sensing techniques
c) . Molecular Technologies in Modern Breeding
• How could we go from molecular lab to the practical application in plant breeding?
• Bridge gap between molecular biologists and breeders
• Cheaper molecular techniques – cost per ‘assay’/marker. Need POC and cheaper, high throughput platforms for QTL identification.
• Marker Assisted Selection still a ‘concept’ in public breeding in China and elsewhere (i.e. need to deliver clear results when breeding for yield, stress adaptation and any quantitative trait in general). Breeders’ (‘s) chip packed with known key markers that ‘all’ breeders need to select for.
d) Models of Ideal Ideotype Designs
• Learn from other similar species or even wild relatives. For example in case of small grain cereals the plant ideotype for high yield potential and/or high yield performance under the drought condition of plants (or any specific crop) should be like Triticale (even if be perhaps a bit shorter) for HYP.
• Improved resource capture in both environments (“optimal” and “water stressed“
• As CO2 resource is becoming more available (due to the rising in CO2) – match other resources (e.g. nutrients such as N) to exploit this.
• Greater lodging tolerance to raise plant height, if plant height is limiting biomass growth
• Less water, higher temps, more-variable environments – need much-improved WUE (at all scales: from the agronomical to the leaf one)
• Do we need leaf sheaths – find something else to hold up leaves!
e) Data Analysis, Management and Bioinformatics
• What should breeders do with the huge amount of phenotypic and genotypic data?
• Pressure phenotypers to deliver data in a easily-useable form
• User-friendly software – integrated, open, cloud-processed
f) National Challenges and Opportunities: the Case of China
• How should China handle the global change challenges?
• Use simulation models to predict crop adaptation as climate changes
• Policy change to limit climate change drivers and effects – China is ¼ of world population
• Water use efficiency at different levels is the key problem
• Tactical (rather than indiscriminate) N management
• In case of crops like maize – adapt Chinese hybrids to greater plant density
g) OPTICHINA Fellowship and Young Scientist Forum
• What are you going to say about the 3-yr OPTICHINA project as it concludes?
• Ripper! – let’s have another one!!
• More China funding for next one?
• Great having Chinese students in European labs, for students and hosts.
• Hosts learn what hard work means.
• Students learn different approaches to science from the ‘Chinese’ view.
• Involving multiple institutes breeds greater interchange.
Potential Impact of OPTICHINA at the social level is being also translated to other aspects:
Three seminars were held in Kaifeng (Henan province, China), at the Headquarters of Tianin Henan Seed Company (an associated member of the OPTICHINA consortium, although not a full member) on May 2011, May 2013 and 2014. These Seminars have not been included in 4.2. Section table because the type of activities offered there were not directly applicable to them. All three seminars were addressed to respond ways to improve wheat productivity. Those seminars included field visits to Lankao field station and headquarters of the Henan Tianmin Seed Company and consultations. Local authorities, entrepreneurs, farmers, decision makers, and research managers were invited to attend the seminars.
Another Seminar about the ways to improve wheat productivity, together with field visit and consultation was held with Full Professors of the Norwest Agricultural and Forestry University, in Yangling (Xi’an province) on May 2013. Local entrepreneurs, farmers, decision makers, research managers were also invited to attend the Seminar. In addition, some Australian researchers were also invited, since the Third workshop mentioned above was organized in parallel.
Another seminar on ways to improve maize productivity, combined with field visits and consultation, was held at the Yunnan Academy for Agricultural Sciences (associate member of the OPTICHINA board), in Kunming (Yunnan Province), in August 2011. Local Researchers, students, farmers and research managers were invited to attend.
Prof. Martin Parry, PI at P2 (Rothamsted Research) have been granted with the Friendship Award (2014 edition), which is the highest distinction of the Peoples Republic of China to the tasks of foreign experts helping to the social, cultural, scientific development of China. This Award had been achieved before (2008 edition) by Prof. José Luis Araus, project coordinator and PI at P1 (University of Barcelona).
http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/news/professor-martin-parry-has-received-%E2%80%9Cnational-friendship-award%E2%80%9D-chinese-government
Two single Memorandums of Understanding were signed, at the 4th Global Forum of Leaders for Agricultural Science and Technology (June 2013, Beijing, China) between the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and both the Deputy President for Research of the University of Barcelona (P1, Spain, represented by Maria Dolors Serret) and the Director of Rothamsted Research (P2, UK, represented by Martin Parry).
In addition, the European Commission has disseminated in efficient manner information about OPTICHINA
http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/article_en.cfm?artid=31956
http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/news/international-horizons-crop-breeding
Another document from EC was an article included in a review published in 2013 by Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, under the topic Biotechnologies, Agriculture, Food - Knowledge-based Bioeconomy. The title of the review was “FP7 projects with China in the area of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology research”. A PDF is provided.
List of Websites:
http://www.optichinagriculture.com
Coordinator:
Dr. Jose Luis Araus (jaraus@ub.edu)
Dr. Jordi Bort (jordi.bort@ub.edu)
Dr. Maria Dolors Serret (dserret@ub.edu)