b'same wheat and barley accessions allowing extensive study of genetic variation and evolution across geographical and his-torical ranges;The life history trait and phenotypic data from all wheat and barley accessions grown in multiple environments along a wide climatic gradient in Europe, from Scotland to Israel;More detailed phenotypic data of a selected subset of wheat and barley accessions from a high-throughput/precision phe-notyping platform, e.g. canopy development, disease scores, frost and drought tolerance;A data repository and management system containing all of the above data with a unique access portal; An interpretation of the observed patterns of diversity in rela-tion to geography and environment, published in high standard journals; A list of candidate genes and alleles involved in key traits such as grain quality, frost and drought tolerance and resistance against fungal diseases; Pre-breeding pipelines using up-to-date statistical approaches and tools to integrate new useful variation into applied breed-ing programmes, including those from old varieties and wild relatives; The identification of new sustainable crop management sys- WHEALBI meeting at NIAB, UK in May 2018 tems and their economic evaluation at both farm and EU levels;The identification of best ideotypes suited for innovative sus-tainable cropping systems, with reduced environmental impact (in terms of pollution, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions);And finally, advices to policy makers at EU level on pro- Europe is the first producer for ject related impacts (e.g. in relation to support agriculture, agro-environment and other CAP - Common Agriculturalwheat & barley, so it has a duty to Policy - related issues). satisfy an increasing world demand WAS THIS EU MONEY WELL SPENT? while addressing climate change Yes, we really think it was, says Charmet. Of course, we always think we could do better, as for example for genotyping, whereand sustainability.the cost of genotyping from the beginning of the project has still decreased a lot, and the level of putative information available increased a lot. So, the money used at the beginning could have been better used at the end. But we needed the genotyping, to do the research anyway. We think we have done all possible thingsrelease varieties. This means that the direct output are not vari-with the money we obtained from the European Commission toeties ready for the market, but rather knowledge to orient new try to solve the numerous complex questions they raised in thecrosses, methods to better select in progenies and concretely initial Call for Proposals. improved lines to be used as genitors in crosses, for example with characterized resistances. WHAT HAPPENS NOW? Five to 10 years may then be required to develop a commer-Crepieux says they are finalizing the last reporting to thecial variety from WHEALBI outputs, Crepieux states.Commission, and the last actions of disseminating the results.Moving forward, Charmet says there are a few things he The last newsletter released in December 2018 gave feedbackwould do differently, as they asked this question for the last about the five years of the project (through interviews of thenewsletter to all of their WP leaders, and the answers were rang-WPs leaders and a Ph.D.). They also explained where to finding, from a better WP integration, to a better tracking of genetic the results, including the link and explanation to the genomicresources or the focus on less scientific questions to go deeper and phenome legacy: the database with all the genotyping andon less fields.phenotyping data of the 500 genetic resources of wheat andAnyway, I think personally that we should have been more 500 genetic resources of barley. Many research consortia havecautious in the selection of the WHEALBI collection: ensure that already asked access to this database, and will start to use theall material was freely available for distribution according to results, something thethey were really proud of. PGRFA regulations and suited for all kinds of studies (evolution and breeding), Charmet says. We have also been too optimis-BREEDERS BENEFITS tic with the short delay we had to obtain raw sequences and to All cereal breeders will have access to both the seed materialcurate them into exploitable form. Nevertheless, all tasks have and the data collected during the project. They are free to usebeen achieved before the end of the project, although many data as they please in their own programmes, e.g. for initiating newremain to be exploited and valorized in a close future.crosses. Statistical methods and pipelines are also freely avail-able, most of them in so called R libraries.But when will the first wheat and barley varieties arrive on the market, that have benefitted from this project? https://www.whealbi.eu/Crepieux says it is really hard to say as WHEALBI was involved in pre-breeding and not on the final step of breeding to EUROPEAN-SEED.COMIEUROPEAN SEED I 33'