To both ensure focus and maximise impact on plant breeding by 2013, six of the RIs each focus on a single crop, primarily addressing the improvement of drought tolerance, and target 2–3 countries maximum falling within GCP’s priority farming systems.

Salient features

• The RIs are crop- trait- and region-specific. Other than the comparative genomics RI, the other six RIs all present the same general pattern of activities, although the magnitude and the nature of the activities might vary from one RI to another. All in all, each RI features the following:
• A first component on the phenotypic characterisation of contrasting and diverse set of germplasm (eg, reference sets, introgression lines, synthetics, etc). The main output will be germplasm, with new elite alleles for agronomic traits, for prebreeding activities.
• A strong molecular breeding component – the core of RI activities – focusing primarily on marker-assisted recurrent selection, marker-assisted selection mainly for cassava and some of modified backcross-based nested association mapping (BCNAM) populations for sorghum. The main output will be improved germplasm for breeding activities.
• A strategic data management component to ensure scientists plan for sufficient time and resources to appropriately analyse store and label the data generated during the five years of the second phase. The main output will be a user-friendly dataset accessible to, and useable by, colleagues within and without GCP.
• A significant capacity-building component, at both the human and infrastructure level, to ensure that developing-country partners can conduct field experiments, and appropriately manage and analyse project data. The main output will be a network of partners able to use modern breeding tools in a sustainable manner and a set of molecular breeding communities of practice.
• Each RI is led by a Product Delivery Coordinator.
• The seventh RI is based on comparative genomics across three crops (maize, rice and sorghum), taking advantage of knowledge in model crops to facilitate gene discovery in other genomes – one of the challenges GCP is supposed to address. The main objective of this RI is to build on the Phase I characterisation of Alt₁ and Pup₁ to identify orthologous gene(s) for aluminium tolerance in rice and sorghum, and to improve phosphorus uptake efficiency in sorghum and maize.