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Plant Breeding



NIAB is investing £1.25 million over five years to establish an innovative programme in pre-breeding that will provide a delivery mechanism allowing novel traits to flow from publicly funded research through to exploitation in commercial breeding. This new initiative, known as the Centre for Crop Genetics, Breeding and Evaluation will provide a product conferring capability available to all UK researchers and end-users. In addition, it will develop a unique platform for the delivery of novel traits and associated marker technologies in wheat, oilseed rape, pulses and non-food crop applications. Trait genes and markers will be validated in pre-competitive, UK adapted germplasm that can be accessed by commercial breeders and end-users in the non-food area. The Centre will not produce finished varieties and hence will not compete with commercial breeders.

The primary objectives of the Centre for Pre-breeding are to:

  • Contribute to the long-term sustainability of UK agriculture.
  • Provide the mechanism to transfer research outputs into products which will be of commercial, economic and environmental benefit to the UK.
  • Exemplify the mutual benefits to commerce and society which can be derived from public-private partnerships.


Over the next five years the Centre will build on NIAB’s existing strengths in the evaluation of yield, disease resistance and end-use quality combined with capabilities in genetics and molecular genotyping by investing in a pre-breeding programme capable of delivering germplasm and technologies needed to produce significant improvements in the competitiveness of UK agriculture.