The Nordic-Baltic region is expected to experience some of the largest effects of global climate change in the next decades. To ensure long-term food security, Nordic-Baltic crops must be adapted to these shifts. Breeding a new crop variety can take decades and it is thus imperative that breeders begin creating the crops of the future today. For this, breeders need information on the expected future climate throughout the Nordic-Baltic region, information on how crop performance relates to observed weather and flexible statistics toolkits for projecting future crop performance based on projections of future climate. The purpose of this project is to build a Nordic-Baltic-level crop and climate information data store that allows Nordic and Baltic crop breeders to quickly access a broad array of weather and crop productivity information. In addition, the project aims to develop flexible statistical tools that will enable researchers to relate historical crop performance to weather and determine how future crops will perform in a changed Nordic-Baltic climate. This one-stop data repository and the associated statistical toolkit will enable crop scientists to more efficiently assess their breeding roadmap and improve their ability to begin creating tomorrow's crop varieties. After two years of work, in 2025 we finalized a comprehensive pan-Nordic field trial database for Barley, Red Clover and potatoes. This involves a compilation of over 100.000 field trials from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. We have also begin using these data to derive general statistical models that relate field trial performance to weather variations, enabling plant breeders to begin to understand the potential performance of different plant varieties. Finally, we have begun compiling a climate projection database tuned to addressing questions relevant to future plant breeding.
The Nordic-Baltic region is expected to experience some of the largest effects of global climate change in the next decades. To ensure long-term food security, Nordic-Baltic crops must be adapted to these shifts. Breeding a new crop variety can take twenty to thirty years. Breeders thus must begin creating the crops of the future today. For this, breeders need information on the expected future climate throughout the Nordic-Baltic region. In addition, they need historical information that relates crop performance to observed weather, in a format tailored to their objectives. Ideally, they also have access to a purpose-built statistical toolkit that can flexibly relate observed performance to historical weather and thereby project the performance of new crop varieties in the future Nordic-Baltic climate. Much of this information can be found already, but it exists across a broad range of different sources or in a format not immediately useful to crop scientists. The purpose of this consortium is to build a Nordic-Baltic-level crop and climate information data store that allows Nordic and Baltic crop breeders to quickly access a broad array of weather and crop productivity information. In addition, we will provide flexible statistical tools that will enable researchers to relate historical crop performance to weather and determine how future crops will perform in a changed Nordic-Baltic climate.
In NorBalFoodSec, NR is the project leader and the one data scientist partner in the consortium. In addition to organising and administrating the project, NR is involved in all project tasks and co-leading all WPs. NMBU is one of several academic crops scientist partners and Graminor is a plant breeding company. Graminor and NMBU are involved in WP1 (crop modelling), task 3.1 of WP3 (repository of variety trial data) and WP4 (outreach and dissemination). Graminor is also co-leading WP1. The progress plan thus includes all main activities and milestones for the project.
