DAY ONE – MAY 25, 2026
09:00 – 09:30 WELCOME ADDRESSES
09:30 – 10:15 OPENING KEYNOTES LECTURES
CHAIR: Roberto Tuberosa (University of Bologna, Italy)
09:30 – 09:50
New realities of Agri-Food R&D Worldwide: Implications for varietal innovations in wheat
Philip Pardey (University of Minnesota, USA)
09:55 – 10:15
Pathogen-informed strategies for wheat resistance breeding
Beat Keller (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
10:15 – 11:00 COFFEE BREAK & POSTERS SET UP
11:00 – 13:00 Session 1
ENABLING SUSTAINABLE WHEAT PRODUCTION IN A BROAD CROPPING SYSTEM.
I: CROP MANAGEMENT, SOIL CONSERVATION AND HEALTH
CHAIR: De Oliveira Silva Amanda (Oklahoma St. University), Pierluigi Meriggi (Horta, Italy)
11:00 – 11:15
Translational digital agronomy for durum wheat sustainability
Michele Pisante (University of Teramo, Italy)
11:15 – 11:30
Toward 1M ha of conservation agricolture in Morocco: soils and crop resilience
Moussadek Rachid (INRA, Morocco)
11:30 – 11:45
BNI-Wheats – A new category of nitrogen-efficient low-nitrifying wheats
Subbarao Guntur (JIRCAS, Japan)
11:45 – 12:00
Assessing wheat nitrogen use efficiency
Amanda de Oliveira Silva (Oklahoma State University, USA)
12:00 – 12:15
Discussion
12:15 – 13:00 SELECTED SHORT TALKS
12:15 – 12:19
Stefania Astolfi (University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy)
Optimizing sulfur nutrition as a driver for iron homeostasis and grain
safety in durum wheat
12:19 – 12:23
Katharina Belt (University of Western Australia)
Proteome-informed breeding and management of nitrogen uptake and
use efficiency across Australian broadacre wheat systems
12:23 – 12:27
Minely Cero n-Bustamante (University College Dublin, Ireland)
The Wheat Microbiome: Spatial and Genetic Drivers of Bacterial and Fungal
Communities in European Wheat Systems
12:27 – 12:31
Estienne Marie (ARVALIS, Paris, France)
Improving the performance of durum and winter wheat in intermediate areas
of France through a combination of appropriate levers: lessons from 10 years
of system experimentation in the Syppre network
12:31 – 12:35
Wasihun Getahun (Ethiopian institute of Agricultural Research, Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia)
Prospects for Enhancing Durum Wheat Productivity in Ethiopia: From Field to Market
12:35 – 12:39 Maria Hernandez-Soriano (John Innes Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom)
From Genes to the Rhizosphere: Harnessing Root–Microbiome Interactions to
Improve Nitrogen Use Efficiency in Wheat
12:39 – 12:43
Jack Jameson (TEAGASC, Carlow, Ireland)
Learning from Long-Term Data: How Rotation and Establishment Systems have
Shaped Winter Wheat Performance in a Temperate Atlantic-influenced Region
12:43 – 12:47
Ramadas Sendhil (Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India)
Identifying High-Yield and High-Profit Cropping Systems for Sustainable Wheat
Production in India – Evidence from Nationally Representative
Household Survey
12:47 – 12:51
Paninder Pal Singh (Michigan State University, United States)
Exploring novel planting strategies for sustainable improvement in wheat
yield and profits
12:51 – 13:00
Discussion
13:00 – 14:30 LUNCH
14:30 – 16:30 Session 2
ENABLING SUSTAINABLE WHEAT PRODUCTION IN A BROAD CROPPING SYSTEM.
II: PHENOMICS, ENVIROMICS, CROP MODELLING, DIGITAL AGRICULTURE
CHAIRS: Kerstin Neumann (Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Germany), Nicola Pecchioni (CREA, Italy)
14:30 – 14:45
Digital twins for the sustainability of cropping systems
Bruno Basso (Michigan State Univ, USA)
14:45 – 15:00
The digital wheat revolution for more resilient wheat production
Andries Potgieter (QAAFI, Australia)
15:00 – 15:15
Predicting wheat yield and production: considering climate change effects
Jean-Pierre Cohan (ARVALIS, France)
15:15 – 15:30
Crop model-guided traits for global adaptation to climate warming
Senthold Asseng (TUM, Germany)
15:30 – 14:45
Global needs for nitrogen fertiliser to improve wheat yield under climate change
Pierre Martre (INRAE, France)
15:45 – 16:00
Discussion
16:00 – 16:30 SELECTED SHORT TALKS
16:00 – 16:04
Shannon Baker (Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Amarillo, United States)
Strategically Timed UAV Remote Sensing for Robust Wheat Yield Prediction:
A Multi-year Study on Phenology-Aligned Machine Learning Dynamics
16:04 – 16:08
Mariano Cossani (SARDI-South Australian Research and Development Institute, PIRSA,
URRBRAE, Australia)
Spectral Fingerprinting of Wheat at Early Growth Stages Enables Accurate
Grain Yield Prediction
16:08 – 16:12
Alexis Comar (Hiphen, Avignon, France)
Digitizing Wheat Variety Testing: Transitioning High-Throughput Phenotyping
from Research to Regulatory Infrastructure
16:12 – 16:16
Francesca Degan (ARVALIS, Paris, France)
Multi-climatic plausibility testing of nitrogen-mitigation scenarios in wheat
using crop models: a benchmarking workflow for digital agronomy
16:16 – 16:20
Lukas Roth (Martin-Luther-University, Halle (Saale), Germany)
Characterizing yield through wheat’s perception of chronological progression:
a multi-omics plant-time warping approach
16:20 – 16:24
Menachem Moshelion (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel)
Synchronized plant–environment time series enable machine learning
prediction of daily wheat transpiration from high-precision gravimetric
lysimetry
16:24 – 16:28
Ehud Strobach (Agricultural Research Organization, Rishon Lezion, Israel)
Grain yield efficiency of dry land wheat in Israel: a high-resolution coupled
crop-climate modeling approach
16:30 – 17:00 COFFEE BREAK
17:00 – 19:00 Session 3
CARBON FOOTPRINT OF WHEAT PRODUCTION TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS;
SATELLITE MONITORING OF WHEAT FARMING
CHAIRS: Jean-Pierre Cohan (ARVALIS, France), Laura Ercoli (Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies, Italy)
17:00 – 17:15
CO2-footprint of the wheat value chain from farmers to mills and bakers
Tobias Schuhmacher (Verband Deutscher Großbäckereien e.V., Germany)
17:15 – 17:30
Carbon footprints and dynamics of wheat farming in India
Netrananda Sahu (University of Delhi, India)
17:30 – 17:45
System synergies to build sustainable wheat yield frontiers in Australia
Kenton Porker (CSIRO – Australia)
17:45 – 18:00
Increasing sustainability of cereal crops using functional diversity
Tim George (James Hutton, UK)
18:00 – 18:15
Discussion
18:15 – 19:00
18:15 – 19:00 SELECTED SHORT TALKS
18:15 – 18:19
Claudia Camplone (University of Perugia, Italy)
Environmental Impacts of Precision Agriculture Adoption in Central Italy
Wheat Production: A Comparative LCA
18:19 – 18:23
Catherine Famelton (Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, United Kingdom)
Sucrose signalling: a new approach for reducing nitrogen inputs in wheat
production?
18:23 – 18:27
Lukas Forter (Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany)
Improved carbohydrate accumulation drives wheat breeding progress and
yield formation
18:27 – 18:31
Oorbessy Gaju (University of Lincoln, United Kingdom)
Phenotyping nitrogen use efficiency for a new benchmark nutrient
management regime in UK farms
18:31 – 18:35
Vanderlise Giongo (EMBRAPA, Passo Fundo, Brazil)
Carbon footprint of Brazilian wheat production under contrasting farm sizes
18:35 – 18:39
Sendhil Ramadas (Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India)
Carbon Footprint in Wheat Production: A Systematic Review and Multi-Method
Meta-Analysis
18:39 – 18:44
Millicent Smith (University Of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia)
Breeding Beyond the Plot: Leveraging Rotational Genetics to Improve Wheat
Performance and Farming System Sustainability
18:44 – 19:00
Discussion