Speakers

Dr Kioumars Ghamkhar Director, Margot Forde Genebank AgResearch Palmerston North NEW ZEALAND

"Unlocking the potential of forage genebanks: bridging omics and breeding for sustainable agriculture"

Forage plant genebanks hold immense untapped potential to address global challenges in sustainable agriculture, livestock productivity, and ecosystem resilience. This keynote explores how integrating advanced omics including genomic tools with traditional genebank practices is revolutionising the identification, conservation, and utilisation of genetic resources.

Dr Bruno Studer Professor, Molecular Plant Breeding Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) Zürich SWITZERLAND

"Pangenomic and pantranscriptomic resources to advance forage grass breeding"

The availability of multiple, haplotype-resolved genome assemblies for forage and turf grass species has paved the way towards pangenomics and the comparison of genome constitution across species and genera. This opens new opportunities to describe structural genome variation and to unlock genetic diversity within and beyond the Lolium-Festuca species complex. Together with a detailed transcriptome atlas, such pangenomic resources constitute a milestone for genetic studies, functional biology and genomics-assisted breeding.

Dr Susana Milla-Lewis Professor, Turfgrass Breeding & Genetics North Carolina State University Raleigh USA

"The next generation of turfgrass cultivars: Advancing genetic gains in drought tolerance through the team approach "

Turfgrasses are the third largest crop by area in the US and as such are a major contributor to national water consumption. This keynote explores the warm-season turfgrass specialty crops research initiative - fifteen years of coordinated efforts in breeding, genomics, physiology, phenomics, socio-economics, and management - to address a critical need for turfgrasses that can provide functional surfaces tolerant to drought, reduced irrigation, and irrigation with reclaimed (saline) water.

Dr Kevin Smith Professor, Pasture Science The University of Melbourne Melbourne AUSTRALIA

"Phenomics – Looking at forages through a new lens"

A classic paradigm of plant breeding is that phenotyping is a bottleneck that reduces the efficiency of breeding programs. The emerging science of phenomics offers the ability to challenge this paradigm. This keynote explores how phenomics is being applied to forage breeding and evaluation to not only measure traits but also to give us a greater understanding of when, why and how the phenotypic variation we observe has been expressed.

Dr Chris S Jones Program Leader, Feed and Forage Development International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) Nairobi KENYA

"Improved forages for sustainable development of livestock production in low and middle income countries"

One of the most significant constraints to the productivity of mixed crop-livestock systems in the tropics is inadequate feed, both in terms of quantity and quality. A situation which is being accentuated by diminishing grazing lands and the impact of a changing climate. Consequently, the demand for new and improved forage varieties is growing. This keynote will show how new tools in molecular genetics and genomic technologies are being leveraged to capture the available genetic diversity in various forages, and to deliver more resource efficient, drought tolerant, and productive forage varieties that are needed to support our livestock systems.

Dr Tim Sawbridge Principal Research Scientist Agriculture Victoria Research AgriBio, Centre for AgriBioscience Melbourne AUSTRALIA

"Forage plant seed microbiomes, discovery and applications"

The importance of microbiomes in human and animal health is widely recognised. In plants the seed microbiome is thought to provide the initial inoculum for the establishing plant's microbiome. This keynote explores the discovery of seed microbiomes in temperate and warm season forage grasses, as well as forage legumes; the functions and applications of the microbes discovered and their pathway to on-farm deployment.

Dr Iain Donnison Professor and Head Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) Aberystwyth University Aberystwyth UK

"Perennial grasses as bioenergy feedstocks and for the net zero transition"

Taller perennial grasses have historically been used for construction and as a source of fibre. They can also provide a sustainable feedstock for green manufacturing and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage in the future, thereby helping in the de-carbonisation and de-fossilisation of other industries. Such bioenergy grasses can produce high yields with low inputs, but there is still a need to optimise their productivity for future climate resilience and their scale up still need to be demonstrated. This keynote explores the need and advances to normalise the growing of these crops by farmers including a choice of crop varieties; agronomy of establishment, cultivation and harvest; and onward supply.

Dr Charles Brummer Director and Professor Plant Breeding Center University of California, Davis USA

"Can we keep alfalfa in cropping systems?"

Alfalfa produces high quality forage while simultaneously providing numerous ecosystem services to agroecosystems. However, the lack of yield progress, the necessity for multiple harvests per year, and pressing environmental constraints including lack of water have resulted in replacement of alfalfa with other crops, such as corn silage. This keynote explores strategies to improve alfalfa production through germplasm, breeding, and genomics, and proposes that reimaging the alfalfa plant is necessary to make the step changes in the crop needed to keep it a viable option for farmers.