Attendees will tackle the past, present and future of plant breeding at the NAPB’s first in-person meeting since 2019.
Registration closes mid-July for the 2022 National Association of Plant Breeders annual meeting in Ames, Iowa, and organizers are looking forward to welcoming people back to in-person meetings after two years of virtual sessions.
Taking place Aug. 8-11 at Iowa State University, this year’s theme is the past, present and future of plant breeding.
“As a theme, it covers a broad range of interests. There will be a couple of anniversaries that take place during this meeting that fit well into our meeting. It’s the 100th anniversary of the USDA Iowa State University corn breeding program here in Ames, and also the plant introduction (PI) station located here in Ames as well,” says meeting co-organizer Paul Scott.
“These anniversaries give us an opportunity to look back and cover the past.”
For co-organizer Thomas Lübberstedt, the present state of plant breeding is influenced a lot by diversity, something the meeting will cover in depth with a diversity and inclusion event taking place Aug. 10.
For Lübberstedt, it will also be a great occasion to think about the role of public plant breeding and plant breeding in the private sector as well, an important theme at NAPB meetings.
“A lot is happening, which really funnels down to the last session that Paul [Scott] is leading,” Lübberstedt says.
That session topic is The Future of Plant Breeding.
“We’re going to have a couple of great speakers who are going to get people thinking outside the box a little bit, and then we’ll have an opportunity to discuss what the needs are for the future of plant breeding. What directions we might be headed in?” Scott adds.
After two years of virtual NAPB meetings, Scott and Lübberstedt said members overwhelmingly asked for an in-person event over a virtual one. The pair recently took part in an episode of Seed Speaks talking about the meeting and a unique feature they have planned for it — a community session designed to get attendees networking and discussing topics of common interest.
“That session is being organized by Dr. Carolyn Lawrence-Dill of Iowa State University. Our goal is to give the attendees of the meeting an additional chance to network and interact and discuss the what they gained from the meeting. The idea is that everybody will go into breakout groups and have discussions about questions like, ‘What can the community do together more efficiently? What resources does the community need?'” Scott says.
“The cool thing about this is we’re going to have reports from each of the breakout groups, and we’ll compile those reports into a white paper that we’ll make available to anybody who wants it. It gives the NAPB a nice deliverable to report on after the meeting and is something the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture is very interested in.”
A roadmap for plant breeding developed by the USDA Office of the Chief Scientist will be used as a springboard for the session.
“We’re going to take that as a starting point for our discussion and then build on that,” Scott adds.
For more information on the upcoming NAPB meeting and to register visit www.regcytes.extension.iastate.edu/napb2022/
