LOS BAÑOS, Philippines (10 September 2025) — With rice feeding half of the world’s population, the challenge to develop new varieties that can withstand climate change, pests and diseases, and rising demand remains urgent and time-intensive. To address this, the Enterprise Breeding System (EBS) has now introduced a new feature in its global platform, called QTL Profiling.

QTL Profiling enables breeders to pinpoint which genes and traits are present or missing in their breeding material. This new tool, developed through the technical expertise of IRRI Scientist Dr. Damien Platten, cuts weeks of work into minutes by quickly identifying traits such as disease resistance, drought tolerance, or grain quality in a plant’s genome. This, in turn, helps accelerate the development of rice varieties that can meet growing demand and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Traditionally, analyzing molecular data was a slow, painstaking task that often took days or even weeks of cleaning datasets and interpreting results. With this new tool, housed under the Molecular Data Analysis Module (MDA) on the EBS platform, the process is streamlined into just three steps: request, upload, and analyze. Within minutes, breeders receive precise QTL profiles, freeing them to focus on strategic breeding decisions.

For rice, where IRRI leads global breeding, the tool generates QTL profiles for around 90 high-value genes controlling traits that farmers and consumers need most. It gives breeders an “instant picture” of whether their lines are carrying critical traits to make rice climate-resilient, making it easier for them to decide which varieties to keep, cross, or release, and therefore, shorten the time it takes for improved seeds to reach the field.

The upgrade also supports checking seed quality, confirming parentage, and analyzing traits across rice and other crops. QTL Profiling cleans DNA data, identifies key markers, compares genes across varieties, and presents visualized results, which results in streamlining the selection of the best varieties for breeding.

“This new EBS capability for genetic information and DNA data handling marks an important milestone in our mission to simplify breeders’ work while empowering them to deliver greater impact for farmers,” said Andre Moretto Embersics, CGIAR’s Breeding Resources Digital Solutions Lead.

“This achievement is only possible thanks to the dedication of the BR Digital Solutions team and the strong partnerships we’ve built with CGIAR Centers such as IRRI. The IRRI Rice Team has been a steadfast partner since before EBS was even a prototype, and collaborating with them continues to drive meaningful results," he added.

About the Enterprise Breeding System (EBS)

The Enterprise Breeding System is CGIAR’s global digital platform designed to support modern plant breeding. By integrating data management, analytics, and decision-support tools, EBS enables breeders worldwide to develop improved, climate-resilient, and market-preferred crop varieties more efficiently and effectively. Rice, wheat, and maize have been early adopters of EBS, which is now supporting 20 crops at CGIAR and NARES centers.

This work contributes to IRRI’s work under CGIAR Breeding for Tomorrow (B4T) Science Program through its Breeding Resources Area of Work. Breeding Resources is a partnership that brokers and delivers sustainable, cost-effective breeding and research tools and services across the global CGIAR-partner breeding network.