The Climate Challenge in Plant Breeding
As climate change accelerates, climate resilience has become a cornerstone of modern breeding programs. However, progress in developing climate-adapted crop varieties is hindered by a limited understanding of changing genotype-by-environment interactions (GxEs). While advancements in genotyping and phenotyping have surged ahead, the ability to characterize the environmental component of GxEs—also known as envirotyping—has lagged behind. This gap is due in part to the lack of high-quality climate datasets tailored to the needs of the crop sector, the high cost and slow pace of multi-environment trials, and the underdevelopment of specialized analytical tools.
With more detailed and robust future environment data and GxE characterizations, breeders would be empowered to make better informed selections of promising crop varieties for future climate conditions and different climate scenarios. This would also enable them to identify the most similar breeding site and station to the expected future climate context, and improve the success of trials as well as seed production.
As a result of this data gap, breeders now struggle to efficiently test and select varieties that are adapted to future climate conditions and can withstand the increasing frequency and intensity of climate extremes.
A Data-Driven Solution: the CLIMTAG Toolbox
To bridge this gap, VITO developed CLIMTAG, a dynamic, user-friendly platform designed to provide accurate and detailed climate data for the agricultural sector. With and around CLIMTAG, we are developing a comprehensive toolbox that is tailor-made to the plant breeding sector and which integrates:
- State-of-the-art agri-climate data products, covering three climate scenarios over different timeframes between 1980 and 2100.
- An intuitive, interactive dashboard to extract practical climate maps and graphs.
- A flexible environment to assemble on-demand climate data products for plant breeders, accessible through the openEO platform, and customize agri-climatic parameters to your specific breeding program.
The Science Behind CLIMTAG
At the heart of CLIMTAG is a large and scientifically robust dataset that joins historical reanalysis data, long-term future climate projections scenarios, along with tailored agri-climatic indicators. The datasets are visualized in the dashboard through interactive maps and graphs. You can also download them for further analysis. Leveraging VITO’s advanced downscaling techniques, CLIMTAG provides spatially and seasonally detailed long-term climate trends, respectively, at a resolution of one kilometre and in intervals of ten days. By applying bias-correction, big data methods and combining a wide range of climate models and local weather datasets, we reduce uncertainty and improve the confidence of projections.
CLIMTAG is currently available in 26 countries and is used by agricultural stakeholders to support climate adaptation strategies in conjunction with crop yield models and climate risk analysis.
Figure 1: The CLIMTAG dashboard showing its agri-climatic indicators for Italy.
Innovating for Extreme Weather Adaptation
On top of future climate averages, VITO is developing a series of extreme climate indicators for agriculture and plant breeding to better capture the impact of future heavy weather events on crop production. We are creating an innovative method to refine globally available climate projections. By incorporating historical weather measurements and applying statistical downscaling techniques, we can enhance the level of temporal detail of the projections. This allows users to get more information on the expected frequency and intensity of future climate extremes in specific locations, for instance for heat of frost events, heavy rainfall, or windstorms - a crucial advantage for breeding climate-resilient crops.
Figure 2: Annual precipitation cycle from weather observations (1961-2023), ERA5 climate reanalysis data (Climate Model – Original), and the ERA5 data downscaled with VITO’s statistical model (Climate Model – Downscaled). The blue lines indicate the average, whereas the black dots show the median of each day of the year over the multiple years. The grey bars indicate the range between the 10th and 90th percentile values over the different years, that is, the extreme climate values.
The graphs in Figure 2 show the benefits of applying innovative temporal downscaling methods to improve the level of detail of climate models, as compared to ground weather observations. Combining datasets on future climate trends and extreme climate indicators gives plant breeders a full picture of the climatic context that crop varieties will face in the near and long future.
Real-World Applications: CLIMTAG in Action
Case 1: Enhancing Climate-Smart Breeding in Europe
In the Emphasis-Belgium project, a collaboration between VITO, ILVO and VIB, two other research institutes, CLIMTAG is being further expanded to cover Belgium, Germany, and France, and new functionalities are being developed for the breeding and phenotyping sector:
- Providing information on crop-specific climate requirements for optimal variety selection.
- Identifying the best trial/production sites that reflect the climatic conditions of the future.
- Developing tailored and dynamic crop suitability indices and climate risk maps to support long-term decisions in breeding programmes.
By embedding climate intelligence into breeding workflows, this initiative will enhance selection precision and accelerate climate-resilient variety development.
Case 2: Supporting Climate-Smart Seed Multiplication
In another related initiative in Europe, VITO provides solutions to seed multiplication companies with activities in northern Italy, a region that is struggling with low seed productivity due to drought stress. For this, we use the CLIMTAG toolbox to develop a tailored seasonal forecasting system that indicates drought conditions in the upcoming season (three and six months ahead) and supports smart decisions on the location and extension of seed production fields. To improve accuracy, VITO combines regionally adapted forecasting models with local weather stations. To bolster usability, the forecasts will be provided through the user-friendly CLIMTAG dashboard.
The Future of Climate-Smart Breeding
By equipping breeders, seed companies, and researchers with high-resolution and high-detail climate information, CLIMTAG supports more precise GxE analyses, improves variety performance prediction, and enables cost-effective field trial and seed production decisions.
Would you like to see CLIMTAG in action? Come and watch our session during the CROP Innovation & Business Conference in Cologne on day two, March 31. Or get in touch with Francisco Vilela Pereira to learn how this tool can support your breeding program.
Want more information about the CLIMTAG application? Learn more here.
