CoBreeding

To respond more effectively and quickly to the challenges of agroecological transition, climate change (adaptation and mitigation), overall health, animal welfare, environmentally friendly agricultural practices, and consumer expectations, it is necessary to develop new ways to harness genetic diversity. Selection programs must, therefore, evolve to offer a greater number of more diverse and complementary genotypes, covering a wide range of environmental conditions and current and future production systems. Defining and implementing new genetic improvement strategies require systemic approaches to revisit the technical and socio-economic elements that determine the choices of populations/breeds/lines/varieties/individuals and their orientation in various animal or plant production systems.

These challenges concern both plant and animal improvement and will be addressed together in the CoBreeding project, structured into three main axes:

• Studying the processes of collective construction involving heterogeneous communities of actors.
• Enriching multi-criteria genetic evaluation methods, including environmental complexity.
• Diversifying and improving genetic improvement strategies.

The objectives are to co-produce knowledge and generic tools to facilitate the dynamic management of animal populations and plant genetic resources, with the participation of selection operators, technical institutes, and direct or indirect users (farmers, consumers, citizens) to drive agroecological transformation.

The CoBreeding project will bring together more than 80 recognized specialists in biology (genetics, plant sciences, and animal sciences), data sciences (mathematics, statistics, bioinformatics), and social sciences from INRAE, Inria- , AgroParisTech, AgroCampus, Université Paris-Saclay, Mines Paris - PSL, ENSFEA, and Oniris, who will contribute a total of 360 person-months of work to the project.