Title of project: Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA-II)
Funding agency: CIMMYT
Total approved cost of the project: 73.50 lakhs
Objective:
- Enhance genetic gains and strengthen climate resilient maize breeding pipeline through deployment of validated genomic regions for heat tolerance into Asia-adapted germplasm 6
- Integrate rapid-cycle genomic selection and doubled haploid (DH) technology as a mainstream breeding tools for accelerated genetic gains for heat and heat + drought tolerance in maize
- Develop, validate and deploy high-throughput phenotyping platform and algorithms to measure subtle, reproducible, physiologically relevant changes in maize plants under heat and heat + drought stresses
- Accelerated development and inclusive deployment of elite, stress-resilient maize hybrids through public-private producer partnerships (PPPP)
- Strengthen capacity of NARS and SME seed companies for sustainable development and delivery of improved stress-resilient maize varieties
Project team:
Dr Ramesh Kumar(PI) , Dr SL Jat (CO-PI) and Dr Bhupender Kumar (CO-PI)
Major achievements:
• Hybrid ZH191085 performed good under heat stress conditions
• ZH182082 gave a yield of > 8.0 t/ha under heat stress conditions