Breeding Program Assessment Tool

The Breeding Program Assessment Tool (BPAT) is a tried-and-tested tool that empowers plant breeders to assess key technical, capacity and management components of their programs in a structured way. Developed and refined by plant breeding experts with decades of experience in major, global private operations, and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the tool is primarily designed to improve the efficiency of public, smallholder operations in the developing world to achieve higher rates of genetic gain in crop plants. However, it has also been utilized and provided demonstrable improvements to large public and private organisations in developed countries. The Breeding Program Assessment Tool is feely available for use as a self-assessment tool; or through a structured, assessor-led evaluation by our team. BPAT was first developed in 2015, and has been continuously refined ever since. To date, we have conducted 65 evaluations in more than 15 countries and 12 diverse crops of global importance to food security. Assessments have produced significant improvements in plant breeding programs that will help drive greater genetic gain for important traits like yield, disease resistance and drought tolerance that supports greater profitability for smallholder farmers in the developing world. For more information on BPAT, we encourage you to visit https://plantbreedingassessment.org/. We are regularly seeking expert assessors. If you have private industry experience in plant breeding and would like more information about assisting with our humanitarian and food security goals, we encourage you to get in touch with us. Please contact us at bpat.admin@uq.edu.au.