In Ireland, we have one of the highest yield potentials in the world, particularly for cereal crops. However, the same climate that allows high yields also demands high levels of external inputs and associated costs. Over the last 50 to 60 years, cereal crop yields have increased steadily, but the rate of progress has slowed in more recent years.
In Ireland, we have one of the highest yield potentials in the world, particularly for cereal crops. However, the same climate that allows high yields also demands high levels of external inputs and associated costs.
Over the last 50 to 60 years, cereal crop yields have increased steadily, but the rate of progress has slowed in more recent years.
Breeding
Plant breeding has been one of the main drivers of this increase in crop productivity and remains one of the most cost-effective strategies for reducing inputs while maintaining or even increasing yields.
In the context of an increasing global population, stagnating yields are worrying.
Improving crop productivity with conventional breeding is becoming more difficult, as the number of breeding targets required to achieve yield, quality and environmental objectives has increased.
However, during this time we have also seen huge advances in science and we need to take advantage of newly developed biotechnological methods and introduce them to crop breeding in order to meet the challenges facing Irish crop production.
Virtual Irish Centre for Crop Improvement
For this reason, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has funded Teagasc, University College Dublin, NUI Maynooth, NUI Galway and Trinity College to combine forces to create the Virtual Irish Centre for Crop Improvement (VICCI).
Within the scope of VICCI, we are able to take advantage of existing Irish expertise in plant science to target crop breeding specifically for the Irish climate.
In particular, we have the potential to use the latest biotechnology methods in combination with field experiments to address four key challenges in Irish tillage and forage agriculture; fertiliser use, crop protection, abiotic stresses and the potential to replace imported crop products with Irish-grown alternatives.
Yield potential
As mentioned above, the high yield potential in Ireland is accompanied by high input requirements and the crop varieties currently on the market require high levels of fertilisers to perform.
In addition to significant costs for growers, fertilisers can be problematic from an environmental standpoint, as they may leech into groundwater and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
There are two main ways to approach crop breeding for increased cost-effectiveness of fertiliser inputs; one is to develop crop varieties which are able to take up nutrients more efficiently from the soil; the second, to develop varieties which convert the nutrients they take up more efficiently into harvestable yield, or ideally do both.
Crop protection products are the second-largest input cost for tillage crop production
Another of the main challenges facing Irish tillage production is high disease pressure. Crop protection products are the second-largest input cost for tillage crop production, which could be reduced with improved resistance in crop varieties.
Major diseases
Furthermore, major diseases, such as Septoria tritici blotch, are rapidly developing resistance to fungicides, which is troubling for future disease control.
Addressing abiotic stresses is also important. In tillage production, winter cereals have a higher yield potential than spring cereals due to a longer growing season. However, actual grain yields can be limited by environmental stresses such as waterlogging, where wet soils over winter and in early spring result in crop damage or death.
Forage
In forage production, the growth of ryegrass pastures could be significantly enhanced if low temperature tolerance could be introduced into varieties. This would extend seasonal growth and the grazing period, as well as providing a buffer against prolonged low temperature spring periods, such as that which caused the 2013 fodder crisis.
Finally, despite our high capacity for crop production, Ireland still imports significant quantities of crop-based products to fill supply gaps. For example, we are currently importing approximately one million tonnes of soya meal each year for feed supplement. Similarly, we import tens of thousands of tonnes of processing potatoes to serve the chipping and crisping sectors. Targeted breeding of field beans (as a replacement protein crop) and potatoes (for processing) could lead to significant import replacement potential.
Research
In order to target these challenges, VICCI has developed its initial research programme around the following areas; nitrogen use efficiency, disease resistance, waterlogging tolerance, cold tolerance in ryegrass and processing quality in potatoes.
The virtual centre will adopt a dual approach; firstly, by field-testing large numbers of varieties and breeding lines to determine which genetic and phenotypic traits can be used to improve future varieties; and secondly, by developing new crop varieties using biotechnology (non-GM) methods.
Some of the ongoing field experiments with a wide range of varieties and breeding lines will be on show during the Oak Park open day and VICCI researchers will be there to provide an overview of these experiments.
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Focus supplement: Crops and cultivation
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