Researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) visited Brazil to discuss new initiatives in their ongoing partnership with Embrapa focused on wheat cultivation. Headquartered in Mexico, CIMMYT is a nonprofit organization recognized worldwide for its expertise in corn and wheat genetic development. The collaboration with Embrapa facilitates the exchange of genetic material aimed at developing wheat varieties with greater tolerance to climate change.
CIMMYT has long supported the advancement of triculture in Brazil. The first cultivars introduced from Mexico in the 1980s laid the foundation for Embrapa’s wheat breeding program and other Brazilian breeding efforts.
The visit included three CIMMYT researchers: Flávio Breseghello, Director of the Global Wheat Program; Pawan Kumar Singh, Head of the Wheat Pathology Department; and Guillermo Sebastián Gerard, a wheat breeding specialist. At Embrapa Trigo in Passo Fundo (RS), they engaged in discussions on genetic improvement, disease resistance — such as against gibberella and brusone — and enhanced resilience to drought and heat.
Private-sector wheat breeders also took part in the agenda. In Brasília (DF), the group visited Embrapa Genetic Resources and the Research and Development Directorate, toured experimental trials, and met with rural producers.
Exchange of Genetic Material
Mércio Strieder, head of Research and Development at Embrapa Trigo, highlighted that the partnership grants Embrapa access to 1,500 genetic material entries from CIMMYT’s collections. This germplasm is part of CIMMYT’s “Nurseries Collections,” which includes genotypes with diverse resistance traits to major wheat diseases across different growing environments worldwide.
“Embrapa has not received genetic material from CIMMYT since 2012 due to the presence of quarantine pests in the materials made available. It is a care to avoid the entry of new pests into Brazil. Now, the expectation is to find sources of disease resistance to introduce in Brazilian lineages, increasing the genetic variability of our wheats,” explains Strieder.
Embrapa will evaluate possible sources of genetic resistance to the main diseases, with forecast to bring to Brazil 54 genotypes for tolerance to gibberela, 10 genotypes for brusone and more than 500 genotypes with resistance to drought and heat. “An example is the advance in the fight against brusone. Most Brazilian cultivars already use the 2NS/2AS translocation, obtained through CIMMYT crosses, as a source of wheat resistance to brusone. However, the risk of breaking this resistance requires anticipation of research in search of new sources of brusone control,” says Strieder.
Another goal of the collaboration is to carry out phenotyping of genetic material, enabling Embrapa to assess genetic variability across 284 CIMMYT accessions. This phenotyping will evaluate a range of agronomic traits, disease resistance, and productivity characteristics in the plants developed by the international center, aiming to identify their strengths and weaknesses under tropical conditions. The findings will support Embrapa’s global efforts to assess genotype performance across diverse wheat-growing environments, according to a press release.
“After field evaluation, the most promising genotypes return to CIMMYT to do laboratory genotyping and identify resistance genes,” concludes Strieder. He points out that genetic resistance is not always confirmed in Brazilian conditions, but it can be useful in another country, hence the importance of global collaboration.
According to the director of the Wheat Program at CIMMYT, Flávio Breseghello, the wheat team in the center is very enthusiastic about the renewed perspective of a more intense collaboration with Embrapa. “We see many points of common interest in wheat breeding, especially for resistance to diseases that are important in Brazil, but also in several other countries where CIMMYT operates,” says Breseghello.
He notes that the biggest obstacle to collaboration between CIMMYT and Embrapa has been the transit of germplasm between countries. “We are resuming this issue, confident that the processes are being conducted with high quality and security for both parties. Therefore, we hope to resume the flow of useful genetic diversity between institutions already in 2025 and, with that, open up many other opportunities for collaboration.”
Clenio Pillon, Embrapa’s R&D director, recalls that wheat and corn are strategic agri-food species for Brazil, as they are the basis of our diet. “Expanding scientific and technological cooperation with institutions of excellence and reference is essential to enhance advances towards greater adaptation of crops to climate change, as well as to overcome more critical problems for the wheat production chain, such as gibberella and brusone,” he highlights.
