Where are we working?
Harsh weather conditions exacerbated by climate change make winter wheat production difficult in the low rainfall regions in Iran, Turkey and Morocco. This is compounded by a lack of technologies for drought screening and their application in the field.
This Benefit-sharing project addresses these challenges by providing capacity building, training, and technology transfer.

What are we doing?

• Preparing a new generation of wheat scientists through training programmes in wheat phenotyping;
• Identification of well adapted wheat varieties and landraces;
• Strategic crossing for trait incorporation;
• Technology transfer to local scientists and farmers;
• Identification of shared challenges and development of shared solutions;
• Dissemination of wheat varieties to participating genebanks and farmers.

What has been achieved to date?
More than 60 young scientists in the target region have been empowered through training programmes in wheat phenotyping, their participation in scientific activities such as international conferences, and developing new project proposals and publications.
The project’s field trials have had an immediate impact in farmers´ fields, after a harsh year led to the identification and selection of key resistant varieties.
The project has achieved considerable improvement in the quality of field trials, achieving trial reproducibility adequate enough for statistical significance (h2>0.5).
All data for disease resistance (rusts and common bunt), vernalization and photoperiod treatments and adaptation to low rainfall and fluctuating temperatures has been documented and archived and is being prepared for publication. Moreover, wheat populations have been genotyped for major genes and SNP markers.

Who has benefited?
The project has directly benefited 556 people, primarily scientists (81%) and students (12%), but also farmers and policy makers. 64% of these were men and 36% women. The project indirectly benefited almost 8000 additional people, through the reach of its web-based platforms.

Best practices and success stories
Working directly with local communities, sharing resources and capacities, has created a unique synergy where trust is firmly established and collaborators collectively provide a much higher impact than if the groups worked separately. These synergies provide unique opportunities of local growth and progress and one local scientist has already received important support and honours from the Turkish government for her research achievements in the context of climate change and breeding.