Maize

The EVA Maize network was established after the successful first meeting of the new ECPGR Maize Working group in December 2019, funded through an extension of the project 'Implementation of the ECPGR EVA Network on wheat/barley and vegetable crops (carrot, lettuce and pepper)' which was granted by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture with an additional contribution of ca. € 300,000 until December 2024.

This network can build on the experience of the French public-private partnership Promaïs as well as previous European projects with the involvement of national genebanks and will evaluate more than 600 European genebank accessions of maize for a variety of relevant traits, including abiotic and biotic stress responses and morphological characteristics with importance to breeders in multilocation experiments. 

A follow-up project led by INRAE funded through SusCrop-ERA-NET, MineLandDiv connects the EVA network with other research partners with the goal of mining allelic diversity in maize landraces for tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. The project will run until early 2026, providing a framework for continued collaboration of EVA Maize network partners and adding new partners.

An ECPGR Grant Scheme Activity ' MALANIRS ' was funded during the first call in Phase XI and will use a combination of genomics and phenomics to develop a model for predicting specific traits from genebank materials using Near Infrared spectra (NIRs). The project, coordinated by Stephane Nicolas, involves 14 Maize WG members and will link with the MineLandDiv project and the EVA Maize network, involving new partners and exploring new maize diversity for breeding. The project will run for three years, starting in September 2024.