Schedule for Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee Meeting, hosted by UW-Madison (Aug 3-5)

Posted on June 10, 2009 at 11:09 am · Filed under News

Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee Meeting

Monona Terrace - Madison, Wisconsin

August 3-5 2009 Tentative Schedule

For registration information visit: http://cuke.hort.ncsu.edu/gpb/meetings/pbccmeeting2009.html

Monday August 3

Noon Poster set up

1:00-2:30 Business meeting Ballroom A

2:30-3:00 break Grand Terrace East

3:00-4:30 Committee meetings Hall of Ideas EFG

4:30-6:00 Business meeting Ballroom A

6:30-8:00 Barbeque Rootop

8:00-8:45 Evening talk (Ballroom A) ”Epistasis?“, Jim Holland NSCU and USDA-ARS

9:00-10:00 Cash bar Rooftop

Tuesday August 4 Ballroom A

8:30-9:15 Optimizing Experimental Designs: Finding Hidden Treasure. Mike Casler, USDA-ARS UW-Madison

9:15-10:00 Developing forage cultivars for the Southeast: Thoughts on breeding, commercialization, and adoption. Charlie Brummer, UGA

10-10:30 Break Grand Terrace East

10:30-11:15 Multiple Selections during Domestication in Phaseolus vulgaris. Paul Gepts, UC Davis

11:15-noon Plant breeding to basic biology and back. Liz Lee, University of Guelph

Noon Lunch Grand Terrace East

1:30-2:15 A dip in the (tertiary) genepool: comparative structural genomics for improved access to genes from wild relatives of potato. Jim Bradeen, UMinn

2:15- 3:00 An accidental breeder: A plant systematist’s forays into the secondary germplasm resources of legume crops. Jeff Doyle, Cornell University

3:00-3:30 Break Grand Terrace East

3:30- 4:15 Creating opportunity through wide-cross hybridization and introgression. David Stelly, Texas A&M

4:15-6:00 Business meeting Ballroom A

7:00-9:00 Dinner Grand Terrace East

Wednesday August 5

8:00-noon Tour of local plant breeding facilities, Vegetables, maize, forages, bioenergy

UW Researchers Receive Grant to Broaden Undergrad Exposure to Plant Breeding

Posted on March 23, 2009 at 9:34 am · Filed under News

UW Researchers Receive Grant to Broaden Undergrad Exposure to Plant Breeding

A new research and teaching partnership between UW-Madison and UW-Stevens Point should yield benefits for both the potato and plant breeding industries while opening a window to a new career for some Wisconsin undergraduate biology majors. The collaborators hope to develop new lines of potatoes with higher calcium content, explains Jiwan Palta, UW-Madison professor of horticulture. Calcium is a key to retaining the quality of potatoes that go into storage, which includes 80 percent of Wisconsin’s crop. They also hope to develop new interest in the career of plant breeding, adds Palta, principal investigator on the project, which is funded by the USDA’s National Research Initiative.

“Traditional plant breeding isn’t happening at rate as it was 20 years ago, because the emphasis has shifted to basic biology and biotechnology. The industry is concerned that we’re not training enough new plant breeders,” Palta says.

The instructional portion of the project focuses on biology students at UW-Stevens Point, Palta says. The school has a sizable number of biology majors, who normally wouldn’t have any exposure to plant breeding.

Four faculty members at Madison and two at Stevens Point are currently developing a one-week course in plant breeding that will be offered at the end of the spring semester. Some of those who take will be offered internships in industry or at the UW-Madison.

“This will give them a feel for the world of plant breeding, and, we hope, will instill an interest in plant breeding as a career,” Palta adds.

Source:  http://www.cals.wisc.edu/

University of Wisconsin-Madison hosts 3rd annual workshop of the National Association of Plant Breeders

Posted on March 13, 2009 at 12:00 pm · Filed under News

3rd Annual Plant Breeding Workshop

National Association of Plant Breeders

An Initiative of the Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee (SCC-080)

3rd Annual Meeting, August 3-5, 2009

What: The annual meeting of the National Association of Plant Breeders, an initiative of the Plant Breeding coordinating committee
Who: All those interested in plant breeding are invited to attend; there are no annual dues; attendees will include public and private sector scientists and graduate students
Where: Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, Madison, Wisconsin
When: August 3-5, 2009
Host: Bill Tracy, University of Wisconsin
Objective: The plant breeding coordinating committee serves as a forum regarding issues and opportunities of national and global importance to the public and private sectors of the U.S. national plant breeding effort. The workshop will include invited speakers, discussion sessions, and focus groups.
Organized by: the Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee (SCC-080)

Registration Fee: $235

Information and on-line registration: http://cuke.hort.ncsu.edu/gpb/meetings/pbccmeeting2009.html

Background:              The PBCC is a national coordinating committee of U.S. plant breeders (SCC-080) established in 2007 at a workshop co-organized by USDA-CSREES and the Departments of Crop Science and Horticultural Science at North Carolina State University. The committee works to raise awareness of what plant breeders have done for the nation and how they can contribute to the future of the United States. The group seeks to strengthen U.S. plant breeding capacity by encouraging improvements in infrastructure and education. The PBCC was established as a Land-Grant University Multistate Research Coordinating Committee.

            According to guidelines of USDA-CSREES (United States Department of Agriculture - Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service) and ESCOP (Experiment Station Committee on Organization and Policy), a Coordinating Committee (CC) provides opportunities for scientists, specialists and others to work cooperatively and coordinate activities to solve problems that concern more than one state. The Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee (PBCC) is administered by the Southern Association of Agricultural Experiment Station Directors (SAAESD) and has been assigned the number “SCC-080″. However, participants in SCC-080 can be from any state. Experiment Station directors of each state are encouraged to name an official representative to the SCC-080. Anyone from either the public or private sector interested in the future of plant breeding is encouraged to participate in the PBCC (SCC-080). The PBCC is organized into an executive committee and seven subcommittees.