There is an urgent need for an agricultural revolution to generate climate-tolerant varieties, which combine proven qualities with novel traits that adapt crop plants to extremes, including severe heat and drought periods. In the framework of the ERC Consolidator Grant "Building and bypassing polyspermy barriers" we have discovered that plant egg cells can fuse with two sperm to give rise to offspring with three instead of two parents, one mother and two fathers. Three parent crosses provide a tool to mine beneficial gene variants of currently incompatible species and to substantially shorten time to market of climate-adapted seed varieties.
In the framework of the ERC Proof of Concept grant "TriVolve", we teamed up with one of the world's leading plant breeding companies (KWS Saat SE & Co. KGaA) and successfully transferred aspects of the technology to sugar beet as an experimental crop prototype.
To further develop the technology for commercial exploitation, we have also partnered with potato breeder Aardevo and successfully applied for an EIC transition grant with both companies that will further advance this breakthrough technology.
