New approaches in forest plant breeding

At the end of 2019, the Federal Government responded to a parliamentary question from the FDP parliamentary group (BT Drs 19/15711). The FDP parliamentary group, citing the great potential of new breeding methods, wanted to know which new breeding methods in Germany were relevant for forest plant breeding and how the Federal Government was participating in research. The Federal Government, pointing out that conventional breeding programs require 50 breeding cycles, pointed out that faster methods are available through maker-assisted selection or logical selection, CRISPR/Cas 9 and TALEN, as well as advances in sequencing, although genome editing in the forestry sector has not yet been sufficiently researched. Although the Thünen Institute of Forest Genetics has been highlighting the enormous potential of biotechnology and marker-assisted selection (precision breeding) to accelerate and increase the efficiency of forest plant breeding for 20 years, there is currently no practical application of these individual techniques in Germany. Genome editing using CRISPR/Cas 9 and TALEN is also not currently being used.