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IWC 2024 Program 

Saturday 21 September 2024

 

The Wheat Initiative Expert Working Group (EWG) Meetings (Open to pre-registered delegates only)
Location: Cliftons Meeting Room Solutions, Parmelia House, 191 St George’s Terrace, Perth WA 6000

09:00 - 12:30EWG Durum Wheat Genomics and Breeding
EWG Improving Wheat Quality For Processing and Health
EWG Wheat Breeding Methods and Strategies
EWG Adaptation Of Wheat To Abiotic Stress
EWG Nutrient Use Efficiency In Wheat
 12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
 13:30 - 17:00 AHEAD Meeting

 

Sunday 22 September 2024

07:30 - 18:00Registration Open
09:00 – 12:00 Pre-Congress Workshops
09:00 - 12:00Wheat Initiative Research Committee Meeting (Invitation only)
09:00 - 12:00Wheat Initiative Scientific Board Meeting (Invitation only)
09:00 - 12:00Wheat Initiative Board Meeting (Invitation only)
12:00 -13:00Lunch
13:00 - 16:30Pre-Congress Workshops
13:00 - 16:30Wheat Initiative Combined Meeting (Invitation only)  
  
17:00 - 19:00Inaugural Session 
 Welcome to Country
Aunty Marie Taylor
 

Congress Welcome
Prof Rajeev Varshney

Director, Centre for Crop and Food Innovation and State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, Murdoch University, Australia

 Opening remarks
Prof Andrew DeeksVice Chancellor & President, Murdoch University, Australia
 Official opening 
Hon Darren West MLC 
Member for Agricultural Region, Western Australia
 GRDC's perspectives
Mr Nigel Hart 
Managing Director, Grains Research and Development Corporation, Australia 
 WA Agriculture Perspectives
Ms Heather Brayford 
Director General, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western Australia 
 International wheat perspectives
Dr Bram GovaertsDirector General, CIMMYT, Mexico
 International research collaboration for R&D
Prof Wendy Umberger
CEO, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, Australia 
 Inaugural talk
Prof Peter Langridge AM 
Chair of Scientific Board, Wheat Initiative, Germany 
 Vote of thanks
Ms Anu Chitikineni
Senior Manager, Centre for Crop and Food Innovation, Murdoch University, Australia  
19:00 - 21:00 Welcome Reception - Sponsored by the Food Futures Institute  

Monday 23 September 

08:30 - 10:30  Plenary Session 1: Advancing wheat genomics: molecular markers to haplotype-resolved genomes and beyond
Co-Chairs:Prof Rajeev Varshney, Murdoch University, Australia
Dr Sarrah Ben M'Barek, Regional Field Crop Research Centre of Beja, Tunisia
08:30 - 08:50Feed the future: genomic technologies for wheat improvement
Prof Curtis Pozniak,  University of Saskatchewan, Canada 
08:50 - 09:10A walk on wheat’s wild side
Prof Julie King, University of Nottingham, UK
09:10 - 09:25De-novo annotation of the wheat pangenome reveals complexity and diversity of the 3rd International Wheat Congress hexaploid wheat pan-transcriptome
Dr Thomas Lux, Helmholtz Munich/PGSB, Germany
09:25 - 09:40The platinum-quality Svevo reference genome assembly: A new tool for advanced plant breeding
Prof Luigi Cattivelli, CREA Research Centre for Genomics and Bioinformatics, Italy
09:40 - 09:55Switches in homoeolog expression bias in hexaploid wheat are associated with cis-variation
Dr Philippa Borrill, John Innes Centre, UK
09:55 - 10:10History of the bread wheat D genome
Prof Simon Krattinger, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
10:10 - 10:25Wheat spike development and its impact on grain number per spike
Dr Jorge Dubcovsky, University of California, USA
10:25 - 10:30Open 
10:30 - 11:00Morning Tea - Sponsored by Inari
11:00 - 12:30 Plenary Session 2: Exploring wheat's diversity, evolution and genetic reservoirs
Co-Chairs:Dr Matthew Hayden, Agriculture Victoria Research/ La Trobe University, Australia
Dr Parveen Chunneja, Punjab Agricultural University, India
11:00 – 11:20
Exploiting natural diversity for wheat breeding
Prof Cristobal Uauy, John Innes Centre, UK 
11:20 – 11:40 Exploring natural variation patterns in agronomic traits using a lineage-based viewpoint in Aegilops tauschii Coss. Dr Yoshihiro Matsuoka, Kobe University, Japan 
11:40 – 11:55 Discovering the Aegilops genomes
Dr Sylvie Cloutier, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada 
11:55 – 12:10 Do wild species help to improve the quantitative traits of wheat?
Dr Hisashi Tsujimoto, Tottori University, Japan 
12:10 – 12:25 Developing the tetraploid wheat pangenome for wheat research and breeding: Triticum turgidum diversity unraveled.
Assoc Prof Marco Maccaferri, Università Di Bologna, Italy 
12:25 -12:30 Open 
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch – Sponsored by Genomics WA 
13:30 – 15:00 Plenary Session 3: Innovative and conventional approaches for wheat breeding (Sponsored by The University of Queensland) 
Co-Chairs: Dr Juan Juttner, Grains Research and Development Corporation, Australia
Dr Taner Sen, USDA-ARS, USA 
13:30 – 13:50 More wheat breeding investment for more wheat breeding impact
Dr Haydn Kuchel, Australian Grain Technologies (AGT), Australia 
13:50 – 14:10 Better understanding genome diversity for more e"cient gene discovery and breeding in wheat
Prof Xue Yong Zhang, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), China
14:10 – 14:25 Controlling homologous and homoeologous recombination in bread wheat to enhance development of new wheat varieties
Dr Pierre Sourdille, INRAE UMR GDEC Clermont-Ferrand, France
14:25 – 14:40 Optimizing wheat root traits for carbon sequestration: A multidisciplinary approach from controlled environment to field
Dr Charlotte Rambla, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, USA 
14:40 – 14:55 Comparisons of phenotypic vs genomic selection on yield in US winter wheat from multiple environments
Dr Shuyu Liu, Texas A&M University, USA 
14:55 – 15:00Open
15:00 – 15:30
Afternoon Tea – Sponsored by Inari
15:30 – 17:00 Panel Discussion I: Wheat Breeding Organisations 
Co-Chairs:
Ms Tress Walmsley, InterGrain Pty Ltd, Australia
Dr Darshan Sharma, WA DPIRD, Australia
 Australia
Dr Bertus Jacobs, LongReach Plant Breeders
Dr Tristan Coram, Australian Grain Technologies
Ms Tress Walmsley, InterGrain
 New Zealand
Ms Sarah Whiteman, PGG Wrightson Seeds  
 China
Dr Zhonghu He, CAAS/ CIMMYT
 India
Dr Rattan Tiwari, ICAR- Indian Institute of Wheat & Barley Research 
 Europe
Dr Jacob Lage, KWS Momont Recherche S.A.R.L., France 
 UK
Dr Chris Burt, RAGT Seeds, UK
 North America
Dr Dylan Larkin, Limagrain, USA
 South America
Dr Ivana Sabljic, GDM Seeds, Brazil
 General discussion
17:00 – 17:30Free time
17.30 – 19.00Poster session along with Sundowner – Sponsored by PacBio & Millenium Sciences

Tuesday 24 September 2024

08:30 – 10:30Plenary Session 4: Improving abiotic stress tolerance in wheat
Co-Chairs:
Prof Bettina Berger, University of Adelaide, Australia
Prof John Spink, Teagasc – The Agriculture and Food Development Authority, Ireland
08:30 – 08:50
Combining complex traits to improve abiotic stress tolerance in wheat Prof Matthew Reynolds, CIMMYT, Mexico
08:50 – 09:10
Fine-tuning floral adaptation in hexaploid bread wheat
Dr Laura Dixon, University of Leeds, UK
09:10 – 09:25
Establishing a robust long-term field screening site for the identification of frost tolerance in wheat
Dr Brenton Leske, WA Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Australia
09:25 – 09:40
Pre- and post-anthesis heat waves impact on yield under field conditions Dr Roxana Savin, University of Lleida – AGROTECNIO-CERCA Center, Spain
09:40 – 09:55
Breeding nutrient-dense, climate resilient and biotic/abiotic stress resistant/tolerant wheat varieties for Western Himalayas of India
Dr Rebecca Thistlethwaite, The University of Sydney, Australia
09:55 – 10:10
High-throughput phenomics and multiomics of the pan-wheat cultivars reveal response plasticity to moderate drought stress
Dr Angela Juhasz, Edith Cowan University, Australia
10:10 – 10:25
Innovative strategies for advancing wheat genetic improvement utilizing synthetic hexaploid
Dr Susanne Dreisigacker, CIMMYT, Mexico
10:25 – 10:30
Open
10:30 – 11:00
Morning Tea – Sponsored by Elders
11:00 – 12:30
Plenary Session 5: Enhancing wheat resistance against biotic stresses
Co-Chairs:
Prof Evans Lagudah, CSIRO Agriculture and Food, Australia
Dr Nicole Thompson, South Australian Research & Development Institute, Australia
11:00 – 11:20
Wheat rust resistance genes: R we there yet?
Assoc Prof Brande Wulff, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
11:20 – 11:40 Molecular diversity in wheat – fungal pathogen interactions as a basis of novel breeding strategies
Prof Beat Keller, University of Zürich, Switzerland
11:40 – 11:55
Dissecting resistance to wheat fungal diseases by leveraging on the wide tetraploid wheat germplasm diversity
Dr Elisabetta Mazzucotelli, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Italy
11:55 – 12:10
Editing of host susceptibility factor genes increased wheat yellow mosaic virus resistance without yield penalty
Prof Ping Yang, Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
12:10 – 12:25
Unleashing genetic potential: Battling Fusarium crown rot in Australia
Dr Zhi Zheng, CSIRO Agriculture and Food, Australia
12:25 – 12:30
Open
12:30 - 13:30Lunch – Sponsored by MDPI
13:30 - 15:00Plenary Session 6: Developing climate-smart wheat in the context of abiotic stresses
Co-Chairs: 

Prof Stephen PowlesThe University of Western Australia, Australia
Prof Richard TrethowanThe University of Sydney, Australia

13:30 – 13:50Seeds for change: production-oriented wheat research from Australia to the world.
Prof Alison Bentley, Australian National University, Australia
13:50 – 14:05Predicting G×E and defining Australian wheat mega-environments using factor analytic mixed models and environmental covariates
Dr Nick Fradgley, CSIRO, Australia
14:05 – 14:20High-throughput image-based phenotyping to predict crop performance in new environments and genotypes in breeding
Dr Lukas Roth, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
14:20 – 14:35Thermally safe flowering window for wheat: Learning from data to inform breeding targets
Dr Fernanda Dreccer, CSIRO, Australia
14:35 – 14:50Dissecting the durum wheat QTLome for drought-adaptive traits
Prof Roberto Tuberosa, Università Di Bologna, Italy
14:50 – 15:00Open
15:00 – 15:30Afternoon Tea – Sponsored by Elders
15:30 – 17:00Panel Discussion II: Wheat Production, Research, & Trade in Major Wheat Growing Geographies
Co-ChairsMr Peter Bird, Grains Research & Development Corporation, Australia Dr Sandra Milach, CIMMYT, Mexico
AustraliaMs Courtney Draper, AEGIC, Australia
Mr Richard Simonaitis, Grains Australia, Australia
IndiaDr Himanshu Pathak, ICAR, India
ChinaProf Luxiang Liu, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences CAAS, China
USAProf Bikram Gill, Kansas State University, USA
EuropeDr Frank Ordon, Julius Kühn-Institut, Germany
Africa/EthiopiaDr Negash Gelata Ayana, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, Ethiopia
South AmericaDr Daniel Calderini, Universidad Austral de Chile, Chile
 General discussion
17:00 - 17:30Free time
17:30 - 19:00Poster session along with Sundowner

Wednesday 25 September 2024

07:00 – 08:30IWC Women in Triticum Breakfast Meeting
08:30 – 10:30
 Plenary Session 7: Ensuring sustainable wheat production through innovations in agronomy, crop management and digital agriculture
Co-Chairs:
Dr Andrew Fletcher, CSIRO, Australia
Dr Silvia German, National Agricultural Research Institute, Uruguay
08:30 – 08:50  Success from system synergies: using G x E x M approaches to transform future wheat production
Dr John Kirkegaard, CSIRO, Australia
08:50 – 09:10
Retrospects and prospects of the Ethiopian wheat seed industry: Implications to sustainable wheat production
Dr Karta Kalsa, TMSR (EIAR), Ethiopia
09:10 – 09:25
Nitrogen management and agronomic performance in winter wheat
Dr Gavin Humphreys, Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, Canada
09:25 – 09:40
Wheat yield progress NW Mexico: A bellwether for lower latitude yields around the world
Dr Tony Fischer, RSB ANU, Australia
09:40 – 09:55
Short-season winter wheat: A new strategy to build resilient and diverse cropping systems
Dr Amanda De Oliveira Silva, Oklahoma State University, USA
09:55 – 10:10
Interactive e$ects of eCO2 and mycorrhization on plant performance are host-species or cropping pattern dependent
Prof Xinhua He, Sichuan Agricultural University, China
10:10 – 10:25
Protein dilution in wheat – future agronomy and reality for Western Australian production systems
Dr Dion Nicol, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development WA, Australia
10:25 – 10:30Open
10:30 – 11:00 Morning Tea
11:00 – 1230
Plenary Session 8: Collaboration, social and economic impacts of wheat research
Co-Chairs:Dr Michael Robertson, CSIRO, Australia
Prof Mark Gibberd, CCDM/ Curtin University, Australia
11:00 – 11:20
Managing the Global Risk of Wheat Disease Epidemics: Innovations and Collaborations for Sustainable Wheat Production
Prof Marcelis Acevedo, Cornell University, USA
11:20 – 11:35
Harvesting hope: The East African wheat transformation
Dr Sridhar Bhavani, CIMMYT, Mexico
11:35 – 11:50
Socio-economic impact of improved wheat varieties at farmers’ field in India – An experimental approach
Dr Ramadas Sendhil, Pondicherry University, India
11:50 – 12:05
Wheat breeding and scaling in Africa: Challenges and opportunities from ICARDA’s perspective
Dr Wuletaw Tadesse, ICARDA, Syria
12:05 – 12:20
The CAIGE program – A valuable source of genetic resistance to several wheat diseases
Dr Julie Nicol, University of Sydney, Australia
12:20 – 12:30
Open
12:30 – 13:20
Lunch
13:30 – 15:00
Special Session 11: Early Career Researchers presentations
Co-Chairs:
Dr Colin Cavanagh, BASF, Australia
Prof Alison Bentley, Australian National University, Australia
13:30 – 13:37
Spike-branching wheat: Hype or hope?
Dr Ragavendran Abbai, Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Germany
13:37 – 13:44
Exploring basal spikelet infertility through spatial transcriptomics
Mr Maximillian Jones, John Innes Centre, UK
13:44 – 13:51
Unlocking the secrets of female fertility in wheat for improved hybrid seed production
Dr Marina Millán Blánquez, Laboratoire Reproduction Et D’eveloppement Des Plantes (rdp-lyon), France
13:51 – 13:58
Candidate loci and evolutionary insights on yellow rust resistance in an Asian wheat NAM population
Ms Katharina Jung, University of Zurich, Switzerland
13:58 – 14:04
Why stabilizing grain proteins can help modern wheat agriculture
Dr Hui Cao, The University of Western Australia, Australia
14:04 – 14:11
Beyond the genome: A pan-transcriptome for Aegilops tauschii
Dr Samuel Holden, University of British Columbia, Canada
14:11 – 14:18
Unveiling the mechanism of the Sr62 wheat tandem kinase Dr Renjie Chen, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
14:18 – 14:25
Overcoming genotypic dependency and bypassing immature embryo in wheat transformation by using morphogenic regulators
Ms Ziru Zhou, Huazhong Agricultural University, China
14:25 – 14:32
Integrating uas phenomic data into the Texas A&M winter wheat breeding program
Ms Shannon Baker, Texas A&M Agrilife Research, USA
14:32 – 14:39
Unravelling the genetic basis of heat tolerance in wheat
Mr Rakshith Gowda, Murdoch University, Australia
14:39 – 14:46
Gene editing of upstream open reading frames to investigate novel iron biofortification strategies in wheat Mr Oscar Carey-Fung, The University of Melbourne, Australia
14:46 – 14:55
Temperature and photoperiod interaction: Releasing aerial branching in wheat
Ms Isabel Faci, John Innes Centre, UK
14:55 – 15:00
 Open
15:00 – 16:00
Poster Session
16:00 – 17:30
ECR & Student Career Pathways Panel and Networking Social Event 
17:30 – 19:00
Free Time
19:00 – 23:00
Congress Dinner – Sponsored by Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF)

 

Thursday 26 September 2024

08:30 – 10:30Plenary Session 9: Wheat quality, end-use processing and value addition for human health and nutrition
Co-Chairs:
Dr Dion Bennett, Australian Grain Technologies, Australia Dr David Tabah, InterGrain Pty Ltd, Australia
08:30 – 08:50
Breakthroughs in International Wheat Quality Research: Success Stories from the EWG on Improving Wheat Quality for Enhancing Wheat for Processing and Health
Prof Carlos Guzman, University of Córdoba, Spain
08:50 – 09:10
Black wheat: Biofortfication to public health intervention Dr Monika Garg, National Agri-Biotechnology Institute, India
09:10 – 09:25
Amylose content of wheat flour noodles e!ects postprandial satiety and glycaemic response in healthy adults
Dr Wendy Hunt, Murdoch University, Australia
09:25 – 09:40
Genetic variation for mineral uptake and partitioning in the Watkins germplasm collection
Prof Malcolm Hawkesford, Rothamsted Research, UK
09:40 – 09:55
Increasing micronutrient retention and bioavailability through processing and genetic improvement
Dr Maria Itria Ibba, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Mexico
09:55 – 10:10
Understanding starch granule formation in wheat for improved nutritional and functional quality
Dr David Seung, John Innes Centre, UK
10:10 – 10:25Health-promoting and technological properties of novel durum wheat materials and derived foods
Dr Barbara Laddomada, ISPA CNR, Italy
10:25 – 10:30 Open
10:30 – 11:00
Morning Tea
11:00 – 12:30 Plenary Session 10: New horizons for advancing wheat research (Sponsored by The University of Queensland)
Co-Chairs:
Prof Ian Small, The University of Western Australia, Australia
Dr Mao Long, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, China
11:00 – 11:20
Bridging Continents: Collaborative Innovations in Genome Editing for Wheat Breeding in Australia
Dr Melissa Garcia, INARI, USA
11:20 – 11:35
A phase-separated protein hub modulates resistance to Fusarium head blight in wheat
Prof Gang Li, Nanjing Agricultural University, China
11:35 – 11:50
The application of short-read and long-read RNA sequencing and high-resolution phenotyping to analyse wheat-pathogen interactions
Dr Fatima Naim, Curtin University, Australia
11:50 – 12:05
Source-sink relationships in the context of wheat yield improvement
Prof Tsu-Wei Chen, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany
12:05 – 12:20
Faststack: An AI-guided breeding for wheat genetic improvement
Dr Eric Dinglasan, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation – The University of Queensland, Australia
12:20 – 12:30
Discussion
12:30 – 13:30Lunch & Poster Displays
13:30 – 15:00
Panel Discussion III: Capacity Building/ Inspiring next generation Scientists
Co-Chairs:
Prof Kadambot Siddique, The University of Western Australia, Australia
Prof Hirokazu Handa, Kyoto Prefectural University, Japan
Crawford Fund
Adj Prof Cathy Reade, Director of Outreach and NextGen Program, The Crawford Fund, Australia 
APAARI, Asia
Dr Ravi Khetrapal, Executive Director, Asia Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI), Thailand
WACCI, Africa
Prof Eric Danquah, Founding Director WACCI, Ghana
CIMMYT, Malawi
Dr Veronica Guwela, Wheat Wide Crossing Scientist, CIMMYT, Malawi
IAEA
Dr Pooja Mathur, Head,FAO- IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) , Austria
Wheat Initiative
Ms Teresa Saavedra-Bravo, Program Manager, Wheat Initiative, Germany
  Discussion
15:00 – 15:30 Afternoon Tea
15:30 – 17:00Closing Ceremony
  Wrap-up
Prof Rajeev VarshneyDirector, Centre for Crop and Food Innovation and State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, Murdoch University, Australia
 Presentation of Awards 
 Brief highlights/ summary of 3rd IWC
Prof Bob McIntosh Emeritus Professor, The University of Sydney, Australia
 Closing remarks from WA
Ms Cecilia McConnell
DDG- Research, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western Australia
 Next steps
Prof Peter Langridge
Chair, Scientific Board, International Wheat Initiative, Germany
 Next IWC
Prof Roberto Tuberosa
IWC 2026 Organiser, Università Di Bologna, Italy
 Closing remarks for the Congress
Prof Peter Davies
Pro Vice Chancellor, Food Futures Institute, Murdoch University, Australia
 Vote of thanks
Ms Anu Chitikineni
Senior Science Manager, Centre for Crop & Food Innovation, Murdoch University, Australia

 

Friday 27 September 2024

07.30 – 16.30AGT and LongReach Field Trip
08.00 – 12.00CBH Tour
09.00 – 15.30Intergrain Field Trip