DAY THREE – May 27, 2026

08:55 – 11:00 Session 7
INNOVATIVE WHEAT BREEDING
CHAIRS: Susanne Dreissigacker (CIMMYT, Mexico), Curtis Pozniak (University of Saskatchewan, Canada)

09:00 – 09:20 Keynote Lecture
Historical genomics of host-pathogen interaction in wheat rust pathosystem
Eduard Akhunov (Kansas State University, USA)

09:20 – 09:35
Sustainable wheat production through trait discovery and pre-breeding
Paula Silva (INIA, Uruguay)

09:35 – 09:50
Innovations paving (half)-way towards hybrid wheat breeding
Jochen Reif (IPK-Gatersleben, Germany)

09:50 – 10:05
Advancing hybrid wheat through innovative breeding
Jessie Alt (Corteva Agriscience, USA)

10:05 – 10:20
Exploration of Asian wheat genetic diversity through NAM Population
Shuhei Nasuda (University of Kyoto)

10:20 – 10:35
Translational research in wheat using einkorn genomics
Vijaj Tiwari (University of Maryland, College Park, USA)

10:35 – 10:45
Discussion

10:45 – 11:15 SELECTED SHORT TALKS

10:45 – 10:49
Filippo Bassi (ICARDA, Morocco)
Genomic breeding for dryland durum at ICARDA

10:49 – 10:53
Francisca Castillo (Neocrop Technologies, Valdivia, Chile)
Integrative platform for accelerated development of wheat varieties via
multiplex genome editing

10:53 – 10:57
Hickey Lee (QAAFI, University of Queensland, Australia)
An AI-guided breeding toolkit for durable multi-disease resistance in wheat

10:57 – 11:01
Takashi Okamoto (Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan)
In vitro fertilization system with wheat, rice and maize gametes: Production of
cytoplasmic hybrid between wheat and rice/maize across subfamily

11:01 – 11:05
Anne-Kathrin Pfrieme (Martin-Luther-University, Halle, Germany)
From haplotype-based QTL mapping to founder-resolved pangenomics:
dissecting multi-disease resistance architecture in a wheat MAGIC population

11:05 – 11:09
Damiano Puglisi (CREA, Italy)
Integrating genomics, multi-trait multi-environment modeling, and
multimodal deep learning frameworks for predicting Yield components in
Mediterranean durum wheat

11:09 – 11:13
Paolo Vitale
(CIMMYT, Mexico)
Predictive breeding applications in wheat using genomics and phenomics
through artificial intelligence and computer-vision

11:13 – 11:15
Yuan Zong (China Agricultural University, Beijing, China)
Wheat genome editing: from prime editing to large DNA fragment editing


11:15 – 11:45
COFFEE BREAK & POSTERS VISION


11:45 – 12:45
Panel Discussion II

LIMITING PESTICIDE USE FOR A SUSTAINABLE WHEAT WITH A LOWER ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT
CHAIRS: McNamara Louise (Oak Park Crops Research Centre, Ireland), Kar-Chun Tan (Curtin University, Australia)

PANELISTS: Toby Bruce (Keele University, UK)
Nichola Hawkins (NIAB, UK),
Daniel Leybourne (Agri Food and Biosciences Institute, Belfast, UK),
Francesco Vidotto (University of Torino, Italy).

12:45 – 14:00 GROUP PHOTO AND LUNCH

14:00 – 19:00
TOURS