BBSRC-funded IWYP project will accelerate wheat genetic improvement by moving novel traits into commercial breeding programmes across the UK and Europe.
NIAB is leading a new international wheat genetics and pre-breeding programme designed to move promising research into commercial wheat varieties and deliver practical gains for growers more quickly.
The three-year wheat improvement project will create a rapid pipeline for introducing and testing novel traits in European winter wheat, producing advanced pre-breeding lines for field evaluation across the UK and Europe.
NIAB has secured funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council for the project, titled IWYP v2.0: a translational hub for international wheat pre-breeding and trait validation.
It is the first major project funded in the second phase of the International Wheat Yield Partnership, which brings together research organisations, public funders and private-sector breeding companies to accelerate wheat improvement.
Led by NIAB crop improvement research lead Dr Phil Howell, the hub will introduce and combine novel traits in elite European wheat backgrounds. The resulting lines will be tested at breeder trial sites in the UK and continental Europe.
The programme involves eight commercial wheat breeding companies and international IWYP hubs at CIMMYT in Mexico, Kansas State University and the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.
Howell said discoveries in wheat genetics do not always translate into gains on farm.
“This project allows us to build a rapid route from promising scientific discoveries to advanced pre-breeding material in adapted, high-yielding variety backgrounds,” he said.
“Crucially, these will then be tested thoroughly across different environments in Europe, working directly with commercial breeders to identify which traits will be most valuable to their breeding programmes.”
NIAB previously led IWYP’s European Winter Wheat Hub, established in 2020. That work used marker-assisted breeding to transfer novel traits from unadapted sources into elite European varieties and produced hundreds of advanced lines for evaluation.
The second phase will build on that experience and more than two decades of NIAB research in wheat genetics, genetic resources and crop pre-breeding. Winter wheat field trials are planned at NIAB and commercial breeder sites in the UK, France, Germany and Denmark.
NIAB chief executive Katrina Hayter said the project would bring public research and commercial breeding together around a shared goal.
“It is exactly the kind of partnership NIAB exists to build: public research and commercial breeders working on a shared goal, so that scientific discovery becomes practical gains for breeders and farmers in one of the world’s most important food crops,” she said.
Professor Richard Flavell, chair of the IWYP Scientific and Impact Executive Board, said NIAB would serve as the European hub for IWYP’s translational research and support the sharing of knowledge and technologies with other hubs.
The IWYP v2.0 hub will run for three years from October 2026 as part of a co-ordinated international programme to accelerate wheat genetic improvement, crop performance and the development of future commercial varieties.
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