Increasing changes in the global food market (e.g. population growth to rise by 60% through 2050, climate change calling for 70% higher productivity due to harvest losses by insects, pathogens, weeds and other limited resources like water) cause major challenges for the plant breeding industry.

The traditional plant breeding process is too slow to cope with these global changes, whilst confronting the needs to provide crops with improved characteristics faster and cheaper, accelerate genetic gain and generate homogenous plants in shorter time and lower costs.

Plant breeders face literally millions of choices when developing a new variety. Today, it takes many years of painstaking breeding to tweak superior traits by serendipity until it is just right for sustainable agriculture. Genetically pure starting material is of key importance for breeders to get faster access to genetic resources to increase productivity of new cultivars. As a growing population and climate change threaten food supply and security, innovative solutions are needed to facilitate breeding precision and output and lessen the impact of agriculture on the environment.