Duration: 10/01/2025 to 09/30/2030

Administrative Advisor(s):

NIFA Reps:

Non-Technical Summary

The Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee (PBCC) was established in 2006 with the initial purpose to raise awareness of plant breeding’s contributions to the U.S. economy and to strengthen plant breeding infrastructure and education capacity. Subsequently, and in response to the need for an advocacy capability rather than just a public outreach capacity, the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) was created by this committee and by 2010, NAPB became an independent entity. Whereas NAPB embraces the entire economic spectrum of plant breeding, including both private and public sectors, the mission of PBCC is to focus on issues facing public plant breeding and plant breeders at LGU while serving and addressing plant breeding issues affecting all organizations utilizing or served by the discipline. There are expected to be many retirees within the profession over the cycle of this multistate so the specific objectives to understand, identify and create initiatives around resource capacity, best practices, education and communication issues within the public plant breeding community are critical for the next generation of plant breeders. This committee has a rich history of being effective at taking initiatives and the dissemination of information for different audiences via comics, posters, podcasts, popular press articles, white papers or peer reviewed papers. This renewal will continue these efforts and provide strength via knowledge and collaboration to the public plant breeding community as we navigate current and future challenges.  

Statement of Issues and Justification

Food and fiber production starts with seeds, and improving that seed to perform under any stress, and increase yields so that the market supply is not disrupted by growing populations, diminishing farmlands, water or nutrients is achieved through the discipline of plant breeding. It can be considered the ultimate form of sustainability by being able to produce plants that do more with less resources under more challenging conditions. Plant breeding is sometimes overlooked as a bit player in the strategy to ensure the long-term sustainability of agriculture in the US, with a large sector of the public not knowing it exists or how it works. Therefore, this plant breeding coordinating committee (PBCC) aims to educate and inform others that plant breeding is a critical need to supply a growing population with food, feed, fiber, fuel, shelter, recreation, and ecosystem services.

Plant breeding is a complex discipline to understand from the public perspective as well as from an academic administration at Land Grant Universities (LGU). It does not follow the typical academic path of research in that developing a cultivar from start to finish is outside the normal timelines for a peer reviewed publication or federal grant requirement. The discipline heavily reliant on its allied disciplines, (e.g., genetics, statistics, microbiology, agronomy); requiring seed storage, processing capacity and people resources at the university level; agriculture experiment station (AES) and foundation seed companies at the state level; and a fully functioning germplasm collection at the federal level; which make up its infrastructure for either germplasm enhancement or cultivar development. It also Further, it typically takes 8-10 years to develop a cultivar which has had to go through a series of field trials and testing protocols in which most plant breeders receive little to no credit for these efforts on the path to tenure and promotion . This impedes the capacity and drive of public plant breeders shifting the focus to pursue research efforts which further slowdown the breeding process.  

The integration of plant breeding and ‘omics’ technologies has revolutionized the cultivar development, resulting in increased breeding efficiency. Capitalizing on new technology at all scales requires continued investment in human capacity and access to enabling knowledge, germplasm, infrastructure, and programmatic support (Miller et al., 2010; Tester and Langridge, 2010). There is a primary role for public sector investment in this capacity and infrastructure, as  plant breeding efforts related to germplasm conservation, evaluation, and selection (Pardey et al., 2016; Carter et al., 2014) are a decade long investment which falls outside of the shorter timeframes under which businesses operate. The USDA-AMS Seeds Report (2023) further highlights this need for increased infrastructure funding for public plant breeders at LGU. Deficits in capacity can severely limit the success of plant breeding, whether in the public or private sector. Continual knowledge of the current national plant breeding capacity, therefore, is essential to identify needs, opportunities, or emergencies where plant breeding efforts are below capacity to meet future challenges. 

Genetic diversity serves as the basis for the development of cultivars that are critical for providing livelihood resilience and food security. Therefore, it is essential that the U.S. and international communities conserve, characterize, and provide access to diverse germplasm for plant breeding. Agreements such as the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) govern the transfer and flow of germplasm and can either help or hinder cultivar development. There is cause for concern over the status of USDA germplasm collections with the impending retirement of up to one-third of the curatorial and scientific staff of the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) within the next five years. Scientists in the private sector and NGO communities have also expressed a need for expanded continuing education opportunities on conservation and use of plant genetic resources. All of these are imminent issues that need addressing since germplasm collections represent the raw material necessary to maintain and improve genetic gain for yield potential and safe guard our food production system. In addition to conserving and accessing germplasm, it is important to explore new methods for efficiently integrating and maintaining genetic diversity, which will allow breeders to take advantage of valuable alleles without compromising future genetic gain. 

Public and private sector plant breeders have a long history of working together in education and research to meet common goals, but this collaboration can be enhanced. Plant breeding companies are concerned about maintaining the supply of graduates from U.S. universities with proper education and training (Gepts and Hancock, 2006; Guner and Wehner, 2003; Repinski et al., 2011). This concern relates to both the quantity and quality of plant breeding students. Public-private collaborations also provide a mechanism to foster innovation of new tools for plant breeding that are essential to the evolution of this science for providing a safe, reliable and sustainable supply of human-driven plant products. 

Science is not complete until it is communicated and there are many audiences that public plant breeders need to reach including federal agencies, farmers, city planners, and those interested in plants. Breeders speak on a wide variety of issues including public policy, emerging threats to food security, and the new technologies impacting plant breeding. There is a need for clear, scientifically sound communication to be integrated into the normal activities of plant breeders. Academics tend to focus communication on a narrow set of fellow professionals with whom the work is most relevant. However, communication tools that help breeders reach broader audiences are key to combating misinformation and pseudoscience and attracting outstanding students into this highly satisfying and important discipline.

This CC provides an opportunity to create a shared community vision and develop goals that connect disparate geographies and present a plant breeding perspective to public policy entities as it relates to broader societal and agricultural goals. 

 

Objectives

Procedures and Activities

Annual meetings will be held to exchange information, plan and coordinate activities, and review progress towards meeting the committee’s objectives. Between annual meetings, communication will take place through email, online discussion groups, and conference calls, as needed. Since all PBCC activities depend on voluntary member contributions, progress toward achieving the objectives will depend on the level of input from participants. It is envisioned that for each of the objectives a subcommittee or task force will be formed to focus on the following activities: 

Strategies

Objective 1: Resource Analyses: 

Collect, analyze, and disseminate information about the evolving capacity, scope, impact, and needs of US public plant breeding programs.

Strategy: 

In 2018, PBCC initiated a partnership with the NAPB, CSSA, ASHS, ASTA, and the Seed Science Foundation (see External Linkages for acronym definitions) to survey U.S. public plant breeding capacity regarding human capital and access to enabling knowledge, technologies, germplasm, and infrastructure. The findings demonstrated that almost half of the program leaders were near retirement age, the median annual operating budget was $266,562, and that most programs suffered the constraints of consistent funding to support key personnel, infrastructure and access to current technologies (Coe et. al, 2020). The number of reported public LGU breeding programs for the survey was 278 but other databases estimate the number is closer to 350 whereas in the comprehensive study of Frey (1996) the number was 529, demonstrating a potential 51% decline over the last 21 years.

The survey design allows for adding new breeding programs and deleting closed programs, making it repeatable over time to understand capacity changes. During the next five-year period, the committee plans to gain additional data points on the public sector, and document whether breeding programs remain intact as the number of retirements is estimated to be at minimum 70 (25% of 278) within the next five years with an updated breeding capacity being published in 2030.

In addition, data will be collected to create similar information from the private sector. While it may not be possible to generate the same level of data as with the public sector, knowing the number of private breeders, plus other demographics will be informative to understand the gaps in education. To assess private sector capacity, there are several potential mechanisms, 1) tracking the number of students who take jobs in industry 2) reaching out to research directors and asking for summary statistics of the breeding companies and 3) working with published reports on R&D.  

Objective 2: Best Practices: Develop and promote individual, programmatic, and
institutional best practices (data, personnel, IP, methods, etc.) to prevent loss of
invested value and ensure ongoing impact of plant breeding in the public

Strategy: PBCC will work amongst itself to determine best practices as they relate to several plant breeding topics. Coordination will be through online discussion groups where successful strategies can be shared and knowledge gaps identified to determine the needs within the community.

Strategic initiatives are: 

• Determine the priority level of plant breeding topics that need best practices.
• Initiate a best practice checklist for both retiring public plant breeders and/or their department head to ensure preservation of germplasm.
• Initiate a best practice checklist for new plant breeders helping them identify what they need to know /who to talk to/ in their first year as it relates to breeding.
• Initiate a set of guidelines to help plant breeders explain to administrators and colleagues their activities for promotion and tenure.  

Objective 3: Education:  Track US plant breeding graduate education capacity across public universities, identify gaps, and develop strategies for achieving relevant and more uniform teaching capacity.    

Strategy 3a—Education-formal: Plant breeding is central to agriculture, yet there is uneven ability of land grant universities to teach all aspects of the discipline. Efforts will be made to help facilitate the development of digital courses on plant breeding relative to emerging topics such as remote phenotyping and Bayesian analysis of breeding trials. Initiatives may include:

• Analyze and develop recommendations on core competencies for plant breeding students.
• Survey PBCC reps to see how the core competencies are represented across agricultural universities.
• Identify areas where online, short, workshops, and/or full-time courses can address these needs. 
• Outline best practiecs for plant breeding course development etc. better available across universities (those with limited capacities).
• Non-formal education options: workshops, short courses – survey; need analysis; recommendations.
• This will also include whether field breeding techniques be included as a core competency.

Strategy 3b—Education-Enhance Graduate Student Training: Promote collaborative models of graduate education in plant breeding, e.g., internships at private companies or increased private support for graduate assistantships with required visits to a company site/function.

Potential activities are:

• Develop guidelines for navigating the sometimes-conflicting needs of the graduate student to publish and the private sector to protect proprietary intellectual property.
• Develop a white paper addressing the research needs of the public and private sector
• Develop priority breeding and breeding research needs that each sector thinks the other sector should cover.
• Develop a list of projects that can be conducted in the public sector but would not be pursued in the private sector, which could be the basis for a new set of RFPs. Examples include germplasm screening and characterization, compositional and nutritional quality, crop breeding for food safety, etc.

Strategy 3c—Education-Supporting Disciplines: Creating effective breeding teams depend on several scientific disciplines working collaboratively with plant breeders. While there has been a decrease in plant breeders, there has been a concomitant and sometimes larger decrease in plant breeding support (e.g. physiologists, nematologists, entomologists, statisticians) and there is an emerging need for additional data scientists.

To parallel the other components of this objective, we need to encourage more interaction between allied disciplines, including:

• Raising awareness of other disciplines among Plant Breeders and University/Experiment station administrators.
• Identify and establish a working relationship with other Coordinating Committees from allied disciplines.
• Share programs, make meeting time available, and share research products with allied disciplines.

Objective 4: Communication: To ensure needed ongoing support of public plant breeding capacity, facilitate effective communication of public plant breeding impacts and needs to federal-state-local agencies, LGU/SAES administrators, and the broader public.

Strategy: Provide input to USDA representatives, SAES Directors, and other officials on key policy issues related to plant breeding. This will include advising on funding mechanisms and competitive grants programs and alerting officials to emerging threats to agricultural security that are relevant to plant breeding. There is a need to develop internal communication between PBCC state reps to rapidly communicate and solicit feedback and understanding on technical and policy issues related to plant breeding. As PBCC outputs become more useful to plant breeders, there will be more interest and incentive to participate in communication efforts.

• Collaborate with NAPB to share information with multiple audiences on the value of public plant breeding programs.
• Help create tools for communication in different mediums (podcasting, video, visual) and different audiences (Administrators, Students, Farmers, Master Gardeners) for the plant breeding community.
• Develop templates for popular press articles, magazines, and other formats.
• Develop podcasting material for dissemination.
• Make a PBCC NIMSS project summaries available on the NAPB website.
• Develop an official PBCC letterhead with documents that are specifically directed to different audiences.
• There is a need to for PBCC to have a science editor for specific objectives that need to be communicated within and between institutions and scientific societies such as CSSA, NAPB, etc.

Expected Outcomes and Impacts

Projected Participation

View Appendix E: Participation

Educational Plan

Information obtained or generated through this project will be shared regularly through presentations and discussions at the annual meeting, peer-reviewed publications, and white papers written on selected topics. Information will also be communicated with USDA via interaction with the NIFA representative. We will also make all materials available on the PBCC portion of the NAPB website (https://www.plantbreeding.org/content/pbcc).

Organization/Governance

Standard governance for multistate research activities will be followed. Officers will include a Chair, Vice-Chair, and Secretary. Each year at the annual meeting the Vice-Chair will become the Chair for the coming year, and the Secretary will become the Vice-Chair. Prior to the annual meeting, nominations for Secretary will be solicited and an election held by email to ensure broad participation. Sub-committees or working groups will likely be needed to achieve some of the objectives while distributing the workload among a larger number of participants. Administrative guidance will be provided by an assigned Administrative Advisor and a NIFA Representative.

Literature Cited

Byrne, PF, Volk, GM, Gardner, C, Gore, MA, Simon, PW, Smith, S. 2018. Sustaining the future of plant breeding: The critical role of the USDA-ARS National Plant Germplasm System. Crop Science, 58, 451-468. 

Carter, TE, Tracy, WF, Sinclair, TR, Isleib, TG, Joost, R. 2014. What is the state of public cultivar development? Proceedings of 2014 Summit on Seeds and Breeds for 21st Century Agriculture, p. 54-73. Available at http://rafiusa.org/docs/2014SummitProceedings.pdf. 

Coe, M. T., Evans, K. M., Gasic, K., & Main, D. 2020. Plant Breeding Capacity in US Public Institutions. Crop Science. 60:2373-2385.

Dawson, JC, Moore VM, Tracy, WF. 2018. Establishing Best Practices for Germplasm Exchange, Intellectual Property Rights, and Revenue Return to Sustain Public Cultivar Development. Crop Science 58: 469-471. 

Frey, KJ. 1996. National Plant Breeding Study – 1: Human and financial resources devoted to plant breeding research and development in the United States. Special Report 98 Iowa Agriculture & Home Economics Expt. Station. 

Gepts, P, Hancock, J. 2006. The future of plant breeding. Crop Science 46:1630-1634. 

Guner, N, Wehner, TC. 2003. Survey of US land grant universities for training of plant breeding students. Crop Science 43:1938-1944. 

Hale, I, et. al., 2024. Sustaining Public Plant Breeding Programs across Generations. Crop Science. Submitted.

Kantar MB, Wang DR, Hale I, Pratt RC, Jensen JV, Lewenstein BV (2023) Improving agricultural science communication through intentionality. Agricultural & Environmental Letters, 8(2),e20115.

Khoury, CK, Kisel, Y, Kantar, MB,  Barber, E, Ricciardi, V, Klirs, C, Kucera, L, Mehrabi, Z, Johnson, N, Klabin, S, Valiño, A, Nowakowski, K, Bartomeus, I, Ramankutty, N, Miller, A, Schipanski, M, Gore, MA, Novy, A. 2019. Science - graphic art partnerships to increase research impact. Communications Biology volume 2, Article number: 295. DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-019-0516-1 

Miller, JK, Herman EM, Jahn, M, Bradford, KJ. 2010. Strategic research, education and policy goals for seed science and crop improvement. Plant Science 179: 645-652. 

Pardey, PG, Chan-Kang, C, Dehmer, SP, Beddow, JM. 2016. Agricultural R&D is on the move. Nature News, 537(7620), 301. 

Repinski, S.L., K.N. Hayes, J.K. Miller, C.J. Trexler, and F.A. Bliss. 2011. Plant breeding graduate education: Opinions about critical knowledge, experience, and skill requirements from public and private stakeholders worldwide. Crop Science 51:2325-2336. 

State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors; Natl. Institute of Food and Agriculture, USDA (NIFA); Experiment Station Committee on Organization and Policy (ESCOP). 2006. Guidelines for Multistate Research Activities. http://escop.ncsu.edu/docs/MRF%20Guidelines%20Revised%2008%201%20513.pdf

Tester, M, Langridge, P. 2010. Breeding technologies to increase crop production in a changing world. Science 327:818-822. 

USDA-AMS. 2023. More and Better Choices for Farmers: Promoting Fair Competition and Innovation in Seeds and Other Agricultural Inputs. Available at https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/seedsreport.pdf

Volk, GM, Namuth-Covert, D, Byrne, PF. 2019a. Training in Plant Genetic Resources Management: A Way Forward. Crop Science 59:853-857. 

Volk, GM., Bretting, PK, Byrne, PF. 2019b. Survey identifies essential plant genetic resources training program components. Crop Science 59:2308–2316.

Attachments

Land Grant Participating States/Institutions

Non Land Grant Participating States/Institutions