When: Thu, 28 Nov 2024 14:00 – 15:30 GMT
The International Barley Hub is pleased to announce the next in the 2024 series of seminars: ‘Exploring Ethiopian barley diversity for local adaptation’ presented by Leonardo Caproni (Assistant Professor at the Institute of Plant Sciences of Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy).
Summary:
Understanding the potential for current and future climatic adaptation of local crop agrobiodiversity is crucial for guiding breeding efforts and enhancing agricultural resilience. In Ethiopia, barley is a staple crop for local smallholder farmers who cultivate it in challenging environments. In this seminar, Leonardo will describe the genetic characteristics of a large panel of Ethiopian barley landraces. He will present the results of a research project aimed at assessing and recombining alleles for local adaptation, and producing valuable resources for pre-breeding and discovery.
The seminar will cover approaches to model barley adaptation to current and future climates, identify alleles and germplasm to be prioritized for breeding for local adaptation, and develop a barley segregant population using an innovative multi-parental design. This population, derived from Ethiopian landraces and varieties, is currently being used to map key breeding traits for resilience, including those related to photosynthetic efficiency as well as farmers’ preferences.
Speakers bio:
Leonardo Caproni earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Sciences and Biotechnology from the University of Perugia, Italy. During his doctoral studies, he conducted research at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia. Within the framework of the international project HarvestPlus, he developed an interest in agrobiodiversity, focusing on the genetic mechanisms that regulate essential nutritional traits in legumes. He continued his research, specializing in forward genetics approaches, conducting genome-wide association studies, and refining methods for population genetics.
After completing his Ph.D., he committed to several European projects aimed at promoting agrobiodiversity in its various forms. Since 2022, he has held the position of Assistant Professor at the Institute of Plant Sciences of Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. Currently, he participates in research on the genetic mapping of traits related to photosynthetic efficiency in maize and barley, using Multi-parent Populations.
While in Pisa, he also began working on adaptation and conducted research on collections of agrobiodiversity in Africa. In Ethiopia, he did research on the impacts of climate change on subsistence farming communities, and in Mozambique, he collaborated on developing tools to guide variety selection for smallholder farming communities in the northern region of the country.
Today, his interests span from studying the effects of climate change on the distribution of agrobiodiversity to genetic improvement based on genomic data.