Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

PBCC Accomplishments 2020-2021

• The USDA-NIFA Higher Education Challenge Grant ‘Enhancing Educational Outcomes for Plant Genetic Resources Conservation and Use’ allowed the development of online courses and training materials on plant genetic resources. These courses and training materials are now available. The first graduate-level online course on plant genetic diversity (‘Plant Genetic Resources: Genomes, Genebanks, and Growers’) went on-line August 23, 2021. The Colorado State University course will be taught by plant geneticist Dr. Geoff Morris. It will be offered both in a ‘for academic credit’ version and a ‘non-credit’ version. http://pgrcourse.colostate.edu/.
• A public repository of plant genebank learning materials was made available at GRIN-U.org, part of USDA’s GRIN-Global site. Items are searchable by format (video, ebook, infographic, etc.) and topic. Training topics include: ‘Collection and Maintenance’, “Phenotyping and Genotyping’, ‘Crop Wild Relatives’, and “Plant Breeding’. Additions of content are expected in future. These instructional materials will be especially useful to the new generation of plant germplasm curators.
• PBCC sponsored a graduate student video contest to help promote the value and importance of germplasm resources to the future of sustainable crop production, and the value of graduate education in plant breeding (https://www.nrsp10.org/PBCC_student_videos). The winning video was submitted by Adam D’Angelo (University of Wisconsin). It is titled ‘The Beet Family Reunion’. The runner-up was a video about high quality soybean protein submitted by Renan Silva (University of Georgia). These videos highlight the importance of the USDA Plant Germplasm System by visually, and personally, demonstrating their use in cutting edge research to improve feed and food products used by everyone.
• A new graduate student video competition has been initiated. There will be two categories for contestants to submit video entries to: “Utilization and preservation of germplasm resources,” focused on germplasm utilization and conservation efforts and “A day-in-the-life of a plant breeding graduate student,” highlighting the fun and diverse nature of what graduate plant breeding training and education is like. https://www.plantbreeding.org/files/napb/video-contest-2021.pdf
• Initiated a survey on where our plant breeding graduates go to begin their careers. A preliminary report was presented on the current data received. PhD plant breeding graduates during the five-year period 2016-2020 numbered 360. Of those, 42% (150) went to private industry, and 49% (176) went to public positions (including post-docs), and 9% were unemployed at the time of graduation.
• The project proposal “Core Concepts: Roles in Graduate Plant Breeding Education, Curriculum Development and Monitoring” (PIs: Mahama, ISU; Luebberstedt, ISU; Retallick, ISU, Bohn, UIUC; Koundinya, UC-Davis) was submitted to the USDA-NIFA Higher Education Challenge (HEC) Grants Program.
• The U.S. public sector breeding capacity survey, in partnership with NIFA NRSP10 and NSF PGRP projects, was published in August 2020 (Coe, MT, Evans, KM, Gasic, K, Main, D. 2020. Plant Breeding Capacity in US Public Institutions. Crop Science 60:2373–2385. DOI: 10.1002/csc2.20227). Currently, 366 crop-specific breeding programs are registered on the NRSP10 map (https://www.nrsp10.org/pbcc-survey-geomap).
• The publication Khoury, C.K., Kisel, Y., Kantar, M. et al. Science–graphic art partnerships to increase research impact. Commun Biol: 295 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-019-0516-1 became the most tracked article of similar age in the journal Communications Biology. The article has been accessed over 28,000 times.
• The eBook Volk, GM, and Byrne, PF. 2020. Crop wild relatives and their use in plant breeding. Public domain (https://colostate.pressbooks.pub/cropwildrelatives/) has now been accessed by more than 2,000 users.
• A Seed World pod-cast #NAPB 2020 was recorded by the Chairs of PBCC (Rich Pratt) and NAPB (Dave Bubeck) (published on-line 8/20/20)
• Additional best practices worksheets on plant breeding communication are available at https://www.plantbreeding.org/files/napb/science-communication-for-plant-breeding-tips-combined.pdf.
• A new PBCC web-site was created in cooperation with NRSP10

https://www.nrsp10.org/index.php/PBCC_about_us

PBCC Short-term Outcomes: The above accomplishments have improved awareness among decision makers of the importance of genetic resources; improved communication among all plant breeders through partnerships with NAPB, American Seed Trade Association (ASTA), USDA, and the Seed Science Foundation to ensure the availability of crop germplasm; improved communication and awareness of genetic resources issues across public germplasm and breeding entities and private sector. New educational programs and products on germplasm collection and curation to meet training needs of plant breeders and germplasm curators were developed and released.