Alliance for Wheat Adaptation to Heat and Drought AHEAD is an international network that hosts initiatives and projects dedicated to addressing scientific gaps and builds synergies to support the development of new wheat varieties that are resilient to heat and drought. The headquarters of AHEAD is located at the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) in Berlin-Dahlem within the Wheat Initiative, and is coordinated by Corinna Harms.
Professor Peter Langridge, Chair of the Wheat Initiative’s Scientific Board, appreciates this positive development: “There is an urgent need for close cooperation in heat and drought research to address the challenge of a changing climate and the demand for sustainable production methods. The formation of AHEAD is a big step forward in tackling this challenge.”
The Alliance has already started linking international projects to enhance impact and identify innovations for climate resilient wheat. Two such projects include the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC), funded by the “Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research” and coordinated by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and the collaborative project “Genome-based strategies to use the tertiary gene-pool for breeding of climate-smart wheat” (TERTIUS) coordinated by JKI, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
Source: Wheat Initiative
