AMAIZING : Exploring the incredible genetic diversity of maize to better resist climate change

Developing approaches to maize breeding, understanding its natural diversity, assessing the potential for adaptation of future varieties to various agroclimatic conditions... As part of the "Investissements d'avenir" program, the Amaizing project, which ended in November 2021, structured a community of private and public players for ten years.

Several research entities in the plant pillar participated in the creation of tools, methods and germplasm to enable the mapping of the determinants of traits of agronomic interest and to conduct ecophysiology studies of maize adaptation to abiotic environmental factors (water stress, low temperatures and reasoned nitrogen fertilization).

The resources developed in AMAIZING such as tools (high-throughput phenotyping, large-scale sequencing, bioinformatics tools and portals), general information (structural variations, markers, associated loci, sequences) and methods (genomic selection, plant development models, statistical tools) have constituted a pool of innovative technologies deployed by the partners.

Important advances have been made in the analysis and exploitation of French and European genetic resource collections with more than 1200 populations (traditional varieties) and 2400 genotyped lines. The methods developed are currently implemented within the framework of the ECPGR EVA network https://www.ecpgr.cgiar.org/european-evaluation-network-eva/eva-networks/maize. The collections have allowed the establishment of original panels for genetic studies.

AMAIZING has laid several building blocks for better selection of varieties capable of withstanding climate change, while gaining a better understanding of diversity, plant responses and the genetics linked to these responses, and exploring avenues for the future," explains Alain Charcosset.

At INRAE, 14 INRAE units were involved in the project, which was coordinated by Génétique Quantitative et Evolution le Moulon (GQE).

• Contact :Alain Charcosset