Cargando…

The Economic Impact of Exchanging Breeding Material: Assessing Winter Wheat Production in Germany

Climate change impacts imply that the stabilization and improvement of agricultural production systems using technological innovations has become vital. Improvements in plant breeding are integral to such innovations. In the context of German crop breeding programs, the economic impact of exchanging...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lüttringhaus, Sophia, Gornott, Christoph, Wittkop, Benjamin, Noleppa, Steffen, Lotze-Campen, Hermann
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7793687/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33424900
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2020.601013
_version_ 1783634041470189568
author Lüttringhaus, Sophia
Gornott, Christoph
Wittkop, Benjamin
Noleppa, Steffen
Lotze-Campen, Hermann
author_facet Lüttringhaus, Sophia
Gornott, Christoph
Wittkop, Benjamin
Noleppa, Steffen
Lotze-Campen, Hermann
author_sort Lüttringhaus, Sophia
collection PubMed
description Climate change impacts imply that the stabilization and improvement of agricultural production systems using technological innovations has become vital. Improvements in plant breeding are integral to such innovations. In the context of German crop breeding programs, the economic impact of exchanging genetic material has yet to be determined. To this end, we analyze in this impact assessment the economic effects on German winter wheat production that are attributable to exchanging parental material amongst breeders in the breeding process. This exchange is supported by the breeders’ exemption, which is an integral part of the German plant variety protection legislation. It ensures that breeders can freely use licensed varieties created by other breeders for their own breeding activities and aims to speed up the development of improved varieties. For our analysis, we created a unique data set that combines variety-specific grain yield, adoption, and pedigree information of 133 winter wheat varieties. We determined the parental pedigree of each variety to see if a variety was created by interbreeding varieties that are internal or external to its specific breeder. Our study is the first that analyzes the economic impact of exchanging genetic material in German breeding programs. We found that more than 90 % of the tested varieties were bred with exchanged parental material, whereby the majority had two external parents. Also, these varieties were planted on an 8.5 times larger area than the varieties that were bred with two internal parents. Due to lower adoption, these only contributed 11 % to the overall winter wheat production in Germany, even though they yielded more. We used an economic surplus model to measure the benefits of exchanging parental breeding material on German winter wheat production. This resulted in an overall estimated economic surplus of 19.2 to 22.0 billion EUR from production year 1972 to 2018. This implies tremendous returns to using the breeder’s exemption, which, from an economic perspective, is almost cost-free for the breeder. We conclude that the exchange of breeding material contributes to improving Germany’s agricultural production and fosters the development of climate-resilient production systems and global food security.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7793687
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-77936872021-01-09 The Economic Impact of Exchanging Breeding Material: Assessing Winter Wheat Production in Germany Lüttringhaus, Sophia Gornott, Christoph Wittkop, Benjamin Noleppa, Steffen Lotze-Campen, Hermann Front Plant Sci Plant Science Climate change impacts imply that the stabilization and improvement of agricultural production systems using technological innovations has become vital. Improvements in plant breeding are integral to such innovations. In the context of German crop breeding programs, the economic impact of exchanging genetic material has yet to be determined. To this end, we analyze in this impact assessment the economic effects on German winter wheat production that are attributable to exchanging parental material amongst breeders in the breeding process. This exchange is supported by the breeders’ exemption, which is an integral part of the German plant variety protection legislation. It ensures that breeders can freely use licensed varieties created by other breeders for their own breeding activities and aims to speed up the development of improved varieties. For our analysis, we created a unique data set that combines variety-specific grain yield, adoption, and pedigree information of 133 winter wheat varieties. We determined the parental pedigree of each variety to see if a variety was created by interbreeding varieties that are internal or external to its specific breeder. Our study is the first that analyzes the economic impact of exchanging genetic material in German breeding programs. We found that more than 90 % of the tested varieties were bred with exchanged parental material, whereby the majority had two external parents. Also, these varieties were planted on an 8.5 times larger area than the varieties that were bred with two internal parents. Due to lower adoption, these only contributed 11 % to the overall winter wheat production in Germany, even though they yielded more. We used an economic surplus model to measure the benefits of exchanging parental breeding material on German winter wheat production. This resulted in an overall estimated economic surplus of 19.2 to 22.0 billion EUR from production year 1972 to 2018. This implies tremendous returns to using the breeder’s exemption, which, from an economic perspective, is almost cost-free for the breeder. We conclude that the exchange of breeding material contributes to improving Germany’s agricultural production and fosters the development of climate-resilient production systems and global food security. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-12-23 /pmc/articles/PMC7793687/ /pubmed/33424900 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2020.601013 Text en Copyright © 2020 Lüttringhaus, Gornott, Wittkop, Noleppa and Lotze-Campen. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Plant Science
Lüttringhaus, Sophia
Gornott, Christoph
Wittkop, Benjamin
Noleppa, Steffen
Lotze-Campen, Hermann
The Economic Impact of Exchanging Breeding Material: Assessing Winter Wheat Production in Germany
title The Economic Impact of Exchanging Breeding Material: Assessing Winter Wheat Production in Germany
title_full The Economic Impact of Exchanging Breeding Material: Assessing Winter Wheat Production in Germany
title_fullStr The Economic Impact of Exchanging Breeding Material: Assessing Winter Wheat Production in Germany
title_full_unstemmed The Economic Impact of Exchanging Breeding Material: Assessing Winter Wheat Production in Germany
title_short The Economic Impact of Exchanging Breeding Material: Assessing Winter Wheat Production in Germany
title_sort economic impact of exchanging breeding material: assessing winter wheat production in germany
topic Plant Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7793687/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33424900
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2020.601013
work_keys_str_mv AT luttringhaussophia theeconomicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany
AT gornottchristoph theeconomicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany
AT wittkopbenjamin theeconomicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany
AT noleppasteffen theeconomicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany
AT lotzecampenhermann theeconomicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany
AT luttringhaussophia economicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany
AT gornottchristoph economicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany
AT wittkopbenjamin economicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany
AT noleppasteffen economicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany
AT lotzecampenhermann economicimpactofexchangingbreedingmaterialassessingwinterwheatproductioningermany