Pre-breeding strategies for obtaining new resilient and added value berries

The main objective of BreedingValue is to provide the knowledge and tools to utilize strawberry, raspberry and blueberry GenRes and pre-breeding material for the creation of new breeding possibilities. The achievements are directed to create European cultivars with resilience to different and changing climatic conditions, as well as adaptability to different cultivation systems. Equally important, achievements targeted at producing consumer-desirable fresh-fruit cultivars of berries with high nutritional quality. With this aim the most interesting GenRes available in different EU public and private GenRes collections and breeding programs can be identified and used for the project. The BreedingValue platform will be developed and validated by using strawberry, raspberry and blueberry, being the most important in EU berry industry, known by its high economic impact and potential. This project will apply the most recent technical advances: a) to identify conserved and maintained germplasm of the main genera appropriate for sustainable berry production throughout the EU; b) to apply new and advanced genotyping and phenotyping tools for the characterization of local races and varieties, breeding populations and pre-breeding material; c) to identify the genetic base of the most important resilience traits and fruit quality traits for selecting new cultivars with increased adaptability to different and changing climatic conditions and cultivation systems; d) to develop studies on EU consumers preference; e) to apply Life Cycle Analyses to evaluate the ecological benefits derived by the application of resilient pre-breeding material and varieties; f) to generate a novel efficient data analyses strategy; g) to develop prototype visualization tools; and h) to disseminate and communicate the results to breeders, GenRes managers, researchers , growers, market organizations, consumers, food industries, health authorities and regulatory and legislative authorities.