Modernising breeding for orphan crops: tools, methodologies, and beyond

In spite of the limited investment in orphan crops, access to new technologies such as bioinformatics and low-cost genotyping opens new doors to modernise their breeding effectively. Innovation in plant breeding is imperative to meet the world's growing demand for staple food and feed crops, and orphan crops can play a significant role in increasing productivity and quality, especially in developing countries. The short breeding history of most orphan crops implies that genetic gain should be achievable through easy-to-implement approaches such as forward breeding for simple traits or introgression of elite alleles at key target trait loci. However, limited financial support and access to sufficient, relevant and reliable phenotypic data continue to pose major challenges in terms of resources and capabilities. Digitalisation of orphan-crop breeding programmes can help not only to improve data quality and management, but also to mitigate data scarcity by allowing data to be accumulated and analysed over time and across teams. Bioinformatics tools and access to technologies such as molecular markers, some of them provided as services via specific platforms, allow breeders to implement modern strategies to improve breeding efficiency. In orphan crops, more marker-trait associations relevant to breeding germplasm are generally needed, but implementing digitalization, marker-based quality control or simple trait screening and introgression will help modernising breeding. Finally, the development of local capacities-of both people and infrastructure-remains a necessity to ensure the sustainable adoption of modern breeding approaches.