ICRISAT and University of Queensland collaborated to future-proof farming in Africa

Across the drylands of Africa, millions of smallholder farmers grow food in some of the most punishing conditions on earth.

Erratic rainfall, punishing heat and increasingly unpredictable growing seasons make every harvest a gamble. Now, two of the world's leading agricultural research institutions are joining forces to change that.

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and The University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia have formalised a strategic partnership aimed at bringing the latest predictive breeding technologies directly into crop improvement programmes serving dryland farming communities. A Memorandum of Understanding signed between ICRISAT and UQ's ARC Training Centre in Predictive Breeding for Agricultural Futures sets the foundation for what could be a transformative shift in how new crop varieties are developed for the world's most food-insecure regions.

At its core, the collaboration is about speed and precision. Traditional crop breeding is a long game, often taking well over a decade to move from a promising genetic combination to a variety that farmers can actually grow. Predictive breeding collapses that timeline by using genomic data to identify which plants are most likely to thrive before they are ever put in the ground. For communities already feeling the weight of climate change, that difference can be measured in meals.

 Himanshu Pathak, Director General of ICRISAT, said,"Dryland agriculture is on the frontline of climate change. Farmers in these regions cannot wait decades for improved crop varieties. Predictive breeding allows us to anticipate which genetic combinations will perform best before they are even field-tested. Through collaboration with one of the world's leading centres for predictive breeding at the University of Queensland, we are accelerating the delivery of climate-resilient crops that farmers urgently need to sustain productivity, nutrition, and livelihoods." 

ICRISAT already has strong foundations to build on. The institute has contributed to the release of over 1,200 improved crop varieties across more than 40 countries, and has been rolling out rapid breeding cycle protocols for crops including chickpea, pigeonpea and finger millet. The new partnership is expected to further sharpen those efforts, with genomic prediction woven into existing pipelines to deliver varieties capable of achieving yield gains of 20 to 25 per cent under drought and heat stress.

"This partnership is a fantastic opportunity to put cutting-edge predictive breeding tools into the hands of ICRISAT's breeders. Beyond the technology itself, building local capacity to implement and adapt these approaches is critical and will help ensure long-term impact for farmers across India and Africa," said Professor Lee Hickey, Director of the ARC Training Centre.

The collaboration will be coordinated by Dr Janila Pasupuleti, who will lead the development of a transition strategy to embed rapid-cycle genomic prediction across ICRISAT's breeding programmes. For farming communities across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, it represents something simple but profound: better seeds, sooner.