The 11th annual Texas A&M Plant Breeding Symposium will be held on Feb. 20 at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center. The symposium is supported by Corteva, Texas A&M AgriLife, and the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. 

a hand holding a large pair of tweezers put plant seedlings in a Petri dish
The 11th annual Texas A&M Plant Breeding Symposium will be held on Feb. 20 at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center. The symposium is supported by Corteva, Texas A&M AgriLife, and the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. (Sam Craft/Texas A&M AgriLife)

The theme for this year’s symposium is “From Field to Data: Evolving Roles of Plant Breeders.” The one-day conference is for students, faculty and private industry researchers from across the country studying plant breeding, genetics and related sciences. 

The free event will begin with registration and a poster viewing session at 7:45 a.m., followed by the program from 8:45 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Registration and more information are available at http://plantbreedingsymposium.com/.

Texas A&M support for the event is provided by the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, the Department of Horticultural Sciences and the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. 

Sponsors include Corteva Agriscience, the Molecular and Environmental Plant Sciences program, Advanta Seeds, Cotton Incorporated, the Sorghum Checkoff, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ball Horticultural, the Texas Peanut Producers Board, Texas Agriscience LLC, Qualterra and Moolec Science. 

From Field to Data events

“Utilizing modern breeding methodologies for quantitative traits is an integral part of today’s breeding efforts,” said Mason Marshall, conference chair and a doctoral student in the Department of Horticultural Sciences. “Our goal, in this symposium, is to bring together innovative ideas in implementing big data to support breeding decisions, along with networking of students and scientists.”

Keynote speakers include: 

  • Diego Jarquin, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Agronomy, University of Florida.
  • Christine Diepenbrock, Ph.D., assistant professor and assistant plant scientist, Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis. 
  • Jeffrey Endelman, Ph.D., professor, Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  • Jhonathan P.R. dos Santos, Ph.D., research scientist and manager, Corteva Agrisciences. 
  • Seth Murray, Ph.D., professor and Eugene Butler Endowed Chair in Agricultural Biotechnology, Texas A&M Department of Soil and Crop Sciences. 

Related plant breeding event 

There will be a workshop on Feb. 19 from 2-4 p.m. that will be hosted by Jarquin. The workshop, “Development of Prediction Pipelines for Applications in Plant Breeding,” will be held in Room 440 of the Minnie Belle and Herman F. Heep ’20 Center. 

The workshop will focus on high-dimensional data handling in plant breeding programs and will include a practical for CHiDO software, an easy-to-use no-code platform, that attendees can install on their laptops at https://github.com/jarquinlab/CHiDO.

The software allows students, postdocs and faculty to explore cutting-edge tools and strategies for predictive breeding. 

Registration for the workshop is available at https://tx.ag/PBSworkshop.

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