In vitro culture and genomics-assisted fast track improvement of local landraces of wheat and barley in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria for enhancing food security and adaptation to climate change

The non self-sufficiency of the target countries cosume in the production of wheat and barley (crops hugely consumed ) because of climate change impact. The lack of adoption of effective and efficient tools. The lack of capacity in application of these tools in the relevant research institutions.

1/ Characterization of phenotypic and genomic diversity of landraces and cultivars of wheat and barley , genome-wide association studies and mapping to identify new loci important for adaptation to climate change 2/ Integration of genomics and in vitro technologies for fast track improvement of the local landraces of wheat and barley 3/ Technology transfer, training and capacity building of national agricultural research systems (NARS) of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria

The landraces of bread wheat, durum wheat and barley had been already procured from the international and national gene banks during previous projects periods in Tunisia (PR-351) and Morocco (during the 151 Call ofBSF). Additional accessions were added to this collection from the germplasm collection missions undertaken in the previous projects. All these accessions are held in the respective National Gene Banks. INRA-Algeria has its own collection of bread wheat, durum wheat and barley landraces and cultivars from Algeria. Based of the previous information on the phenotypes) an association mapping panel of around 200-300 lines each for wheat and barley will be assembled to cover the phenotypic variability for the breediog traits that will be evaluated in the present study. Genotyping platform used in this study will be Genotyping by Sequencing (GBS, a Next Generation Sequencing (NGS] based technology and/or other GBS [DArT Seq] and SNP platforms). The Linkage disequilibrium analysis will conducted on the whole collection. The patterns of genetic diversity and linkage disequilibrium within subgroups will be estimated. The marker- phenotype association analysis will be based on the polymorphisms present in SNPs at different polymorphic loci :in the whole collection and in the sub-sample, respectively. At least one bi-parental mapping population of wheat and barley segregating for the trait of interest will be used for QTL mapping with SNPs (Illumina iSelect HD Chip, 90K wheat chip and 16K barley chip).