08:00 – 09:00 Registration of participants

09:00 – 09:30 WELCOME ADDRESSES

• Silvia Lorenzini (General Director of Agriculture, Hunting and Fishing of Emilia Romagna Region)
• Luca Fontanesi (University of Bologna, Italy)
• Federico Magnani (President of Accademia Nazionale Agricoltura, Italy)
• Roberto Tuberosa (Conference Chair, Professor Emeritus Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Italy)
• Luigi Cattivelli (CREA, Italy)
• Rajeev Varshney (IOC Chair, Murdoch University, Australia)
• Peter Langridge (Scientific Committee Chair, Wheat Initiative)

* Invited to be confirmed

09:30 – 10:10 OPENING KEYNOTES LECTURES
CHAIR: Roberto Tuberosa (Professor Emeritus Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di 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)

09:50 – 10:10
Pathogen-informed strategies for wheat resistance breeding
Beat Keller (University of Zurich, Switzerland)

10:10 – 11:00 COFFEE BREAK 

11:00 – 13:00 Session 1
ENABLING SUSTAINABLE WHEAT PRODUCTION IN A BROAD CROPPING SYSTEM.
I: CROP MANAGEMENT, SOIL CONSERVATION AND HEALTH
CHAIR: Pierre Martre (INRAE, France)

11:00 – 11:15
Toward 1M ha of conservation agricolture in Morocco: soils and crop resilience
Moussadek Rachid (INRA, Morocco)

11:15 – 11:30
BNI-Wheats – A new category of nitrogen-efficient low-nitrifying wheats
Subbarao Guntur (JIRCAS, Japan)

11:30 – 11:45
Assessing wheat nitrogen use efficiency
Amanda de Oliveira Silva (Oklahoma State University, USA) (recorded presentation)

11:45 – 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-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 & POSTER SET UP

14:30 – 16:30 Session 2
ENABLING SUSTAINABLE WHEAT PRODUCTION IN A BROAD CROPPING SYSTEM.
II: PHENOMICS, ENVIROMICS, CROP MODELLING, DIGITAL AGRICULTURE
CHAIR: Nicola Pecchioni (CREA, Italy)

14:30 – 14:35
Welcome greetings – Paolo De Castro (Nomisma President, Italy)

14:35 – 14:50
Digital twins for the sustainability of cropping systems
Bruno Basso (Michigan State Univ, USA) (recorded presentation)

14:50 – 15:05
The digital wheat revolution for more resilient wheat production
Andries Potgieter (QAAFI, Australia) 

15:05 – 15:20
Predicting wheat yield and production: considering climate change effects
Jean-Pierre Cohan (ARVALIS, France) 

15:20 – 15:35
Crop model-guided traits for global adaptation to climate warming
Senthold Asseng (TUM, Germany) 

15:35 – 14:50
Global needs for nitrogen fertiliser to improve wheat yield under climate change
Pierre Martre (INRAE, France)

15:50 – 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: Laura Ercoli(Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies, Italy), Jean-Pierre Cohan (ARVALIS, France), 

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) (recorded presentation)

17:45 – 18:00
Increasing sustainability of cereal crops using functional diversity
Tim George (James Hutton, UK)

18:00 – 18:15
Plasticity of source-sink dynamics contributes to wheat yield stability
Chen Tsu-Wei (Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany)

18:15 – 18:45 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