The University of California – Davis has received $6 million from the US Department of Agriculture to apply genomic-based breeding technologies to conifer trees, the USDA announced yesterday.
The grant supports research associated with the Conifer Coordinated Agricultural Project, a collaborative effort overseen by the Conifer Translational Genomics Network, which aims to bring marker-based breeding within the next five years to tree breeding cooperatives in the US. The grant also will support development of a comprehensive undergraduate and graduate curriculum in modern plant breeding.
The USDA said “genomic-based breeding technologies will significantly reduce the breeding cycle time and the cost of extensive field evaluations at large, long-term test plantations.”