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| Home > Publications database > Bimotec: Buckwheat Improvement by Modern Technologies for the Establishment of a Dual-Use Crop |
| Poster (Outreach) | FZJ-2025-00353 |
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2025
Abstract: Buckwheat is a globally grown pseudocereal, that was a staple food in Germany until several decades ago, commonly grown due to its short rotation time and low requirements. However, breeding of buckwheat was neglected, resulting in no improvement of low and unstable yield, which in turn led to declined buckwheat cultivation for food production. Nowadays, it is merely grown as catch crop due to its beneficial effects on soil health. In recent years, buckwheat gained rising interest as nutritious gluten-free wheat-alternative, as grains are rich in proteins and contain many health stimulating secondary metabolites. These phytochemicals, e.g. rutin and quercetin, are also present in high levels in leaves and hulls. In Asia, they are used for teas and the extraction of rutin for pharmaceutical purposes. With longer growing seasons in Germany due to global warming, buckwheat could be cultivated as second crop in a double crop system, which increases agrobiodiversity and climate-resilience of agricultural food production and generates additional income for farmers. As buckwheat also thrives on marginal sites, its cultivation could also contribute to the recultivation of opencast mining areas.In BIMOTEC, we evaluate the potential of buckwheat as dual-use crop to leverage both grains for food production and residual biomass for the extraction of biobased compounds, such as valuable phytochemicals from leaves and hulls and lignocellulose from stems. Breeding of dual-use plants offers great potential to establish innovative bio-based value chains. To support buckwheat production in Germany and develop climate-resistant local buckwheat varieties, academic and industrial partners collaborate in an interdisciplinary approach. At Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Institute for Plant Sciences (IBG-2), the genotypic variation of root and shoot growth of buckwheat is characterized using high throughput plant phenotyping. Analysis of stress responses to drought and nutrient deficiency support the identification of favorable phenotypic traits and selection of resource-efficient buckwheat cultivars for breeding. Bioinformatic gene expression studies and rutin content analyses by the Institute for Bioinformatics (IBG-4) enable the selection of promising genotypes for the extraction of valuable phytochemicals and identification of marker genes for breeding of climate-resilient varieties. Fraunhofer IME performs in depth metabolite profiling for the discovery of further valuable secondary metabolites, aiming to exploit results for industrial applications to increase the economic viability. The suitability of buckwheat residual biomass for the extraction of valuable phytochemicals is investigated by the industrial partner Phytowelt, who will scale up extraction processes for rutin and quercetin from buckwheat for a subsequent biotechnological transformation into compounds of higher value, thereby giving rise to the establishment of novel value chains. Regional buckwheat production is supported by use of agronomic models by University of Hohenheim performs complementary field trials and practical cultivation of buckwheat to validate agronomic models for different conditions, that enable site-optimized crop management to maximize grain yield and quality. At IPK Gatersleben, genome editing technologies for the biotechnological improvement of buckwheat are being developed to adapt agronomically important traits, laying the foundation for future modern breeding initiatives.BIMOTEC’s interdisciplinary consortium contributes to re-establish the regional production of buckwheat and supports German plant breeders to resume their work on this neglected crop. The development of buckwheat as a dual-use crop for the production of bio-based compounds from green biomass supports the development of innovative value chains and contributes to the development of a bio-based industry in Germany.
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