Breeders at ICARDA and from institutions around the world request germplasm from the genebank for inclusion in trials aimed at identifying useful traits to combat both abiotic and biotic constraints to production. For example tens of thousands of accessions from GRUs collections have been screened for drought tolerance and tolerance to a whole range of diseases.

Apart from the distribution of seed samples to different breeding programs around the world ICARDAs GRU undertakes various activities to facilitate the more efficient utilization of germplasm.  One example of this is pre-breeding where genes from wild relative and primitive progenitors are introduced into the genome of modern varieties (introgression) for later use by breeders.

For example a wheat pre-breeding activity started at ICARDA in 1994/1995 season. It involves gene introgression from wild diploid progenitors, Triticum urartu, T. baeoticum, Aegilops speltoides and Ae. tauschii and tetraploid T. dicoccoides. So far crosses with wild diploid Triticum spp. yielded high variation in plant and spike morphology. Synthetic hexaploids were produced from crosses of a local durum wheat landrace ‘Haurani’ with two Ae. tauschii accessions. Backcross progenies with agronomical desirable traits, i.e. high spike productivity, short plant stature, earliness, drought tolerance and high productive tillering, were identified in crosses of durum wheat with wild Triticum spp. and in a cross of one of the hexaploid synthetics with a locally adapted bread wheat cv. ‘Cham 6’.  Resistance to yellow rust was found in durum wheat crosses with the three wild Triticum spp. and Ae. speltoides and leaf rust resistance was identified in crosses with T. baeoticum and Ae. speltoides.