The AKER programme is made up of two major innovative components. The first aims to identify rare alleles, to establish an allelic reference collection and make crosses with elite material to obtain new varieties with high potential. Alongside this the programme will evaluate and implement new methods of phenotyping and selection based on high throughput tools, combined with knowledge gained in the first part.

Methods and tools

High-throughput genotyping systems will be used to support the breeding, and phenotyping tools adapted to high throughput will be developed in the programme. Powerful computer systems, new algorithms and software will be put in place to analyse the large amounts of genomic and phenotypic information, driven by new human resources (statisticians, computer scientists, bioinformaticians).