August 1 - 3, 2018 Omsk State Agrarian University (member of Omsky Biocluster) will host the 13th International Meeting of the Kazakhstan-Siberian Wheat Improvement Network (KASIB).
The Kazakhstan-Siberian Wheat Improvement Network (KASIB) was founded by CIMMYT (International Center for the Improvement of Corn and Wheat) in 2000. The network currently unites 21 breeding institutions in Kazakhstan, Western Siberia, the Urals, Altai, and the Volga region, whose activities include more than 20 million hectares of wheat. The main areas of the network are the exchange of source and selection materials, wide environmental testing of new varieties and promising wheat lines, the provision of breeding facilities with the world's richest gene pool of CIMMYT, the creation of new varieties, the holding of meetings, seminars, joint publication of research results, training and professional development of national staff.
The most important direction of KASIB's work is the involvement of the network organizations in the 'shuttle selection' system, developed by the Nobel Prize winner, the founder of CIMMYT and the 'father of the Green Revolution' Norman Borlaug. This approach allowed to increase wheat yield in South Asia and America by 2-3 times. The shuttle selection program in Kazakhstan and Russia includes large-scale hybridization in Mexico and Turkey of Kazakh and Russian varieties with the best genotypes from Mexico, Canada, the USA and other regions of the world in order to create new varieties for Kazakhstan and Russia. The KASIB and 'Shuttle Selection' Programs are today one of the best examples of effective regional and international cooperation in accelerating selection.
