Bold Achievements & Goals

Crop wild relatives (CWR) are an as yet largely untapped reservoir of diversity for crucial traits like pest and disease resistance and tolerance of drought and heat—traits that we are going to need in the next generations of crops to help them cope with climate change. The BOLD Project is taking on the formidable task of crossing the untamed crop wild relatives with their domesticated cousins, creating plants with some of the characteristics of both parents. These are much easier for breeders to work with than the CWR to work with in their efforts to develop new varieties that meet the needs of farmers and consumers. New, climate-resilient varieties that have a little wild in them are already reaching farmers’ hands in Morocco, Peru, Chile and elsewhere.

CWR are notoriously difficult for breeders to work with, but our BOLD partners have already learned key lessons about how to do this; they’ve come together, from international and national institutes, from the North and South, and learnt from each other, facing challenges and celebrating successes – together. In the process, they have gained confidence in working with this challenging diversity, and have shared their findings with the scientific community, and continue to do so.

One remarkable aspect of BOLD is that scientists are working with farmers to evaluate crosses made with CWR. This is a new approach to many of the partners, but one that pays dividends in really understanding what farmers want and how best to deliver it.

The BOLD project has already notched up a number of notable achievements.

Varieties Released

Though the primary focus of the BOLD work is on exploring the diversity available in CWR and making it available to breeders, it has already seen the release of new varieties based on CWR. These include:

• Durum Wheat: Jabal (2021) and Jawahir (2022) were released to farmers in Morocco; Amina (2020) in Senegal. All these CWR-derived varieties are highly drought-tolerant.
• CIP-Matilde (2021) and CIP-ASIRYQ (2024) are almost completely resistant to late blight, the disease responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-nineteenth century and still a devastating disease of the crop worldwide.
• Alfalfa: Tozimdi (2025) – which means “stable” or “sustainable” in Kazakh – survives drought and is adapted to extremes in temperature that range from -20 to 40 degrees C. It was released to farmers in Kazakhstan. 
• Rice: Two CWR-derived candidate varieties, Nông Dân 1 and Nông Dân 2 were registered for use in Vietnam by local seed clubs.

In the pipeline

In Kenya and elsewhere in East Africa, some pre-bred finger millet is outperforming farmers’ varieties. In India and Bangladesh, researchers are breeding low-toxin varieties and boosting the crop’s yield to harness the nutritional potential of this crop. In Tunisia, pre-bred, drought-resistant barley is being trialed and has included in that county’s National Variety Registration Catalog. “This means it’s just one or two years away from being released,”says Dr. Miguel Sanchez-Garcia, barley breeder at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).

Building on These Foundations

Will we be able to feed a growing world while facing climate uncertainty? We need plants tolerant to drought and hotter environments, and maybe more variable rainfall patterns. For this, we need the diversity in CWR, the genebanks that conserve them and make them available, and the pre-breeders who are willing to wrestle with the challenges of working with these unruly plants.

If we all work together – breeders and other scientists, genebank specialists, farmers, consumers and businesses – we will be able to deliver these “future crops” and offer the hope of food and nutrition security for all.

So let’s be BOLD.

Are You a User of Diversity?

Want to explore the findings of our Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) and BOLD Projects?

You want to know more about the diversity of the crops we have been working on? You are in luck! Germinate databases, developed by the James Hutton Institute, host a wide range of data on the diversity used by pre-breeders under the CWR and BOLD Projects and the results of their pre-breeding efforts. These include genetic markers for some of the species and data from evaluation trials. The platform also provides tools to help you identify materials with the characteristics you are looking for, and has links to Genesys, where you can directly request samples of the materials you are interested in.

Want to request crop wild relatives (CWR)?

Visit Genesys and explore the more than 4500 accessions that were collected under the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives Project (CWR Project).

Interested in collaborating with BOLD? Interested in accessing CWR-derived (a.k.a. pre-breeding) materials developed under BOLD?

Reach out to our BOLD partners here.