View recording of KeyGene Webinar: Apomixis: the breakthrough breeding technology for the 2020s

View the recording of the international KeyGene webinar, on Thursday, February 17, 2022, on the new possibilities for applying apomixis in crop breeding. The webinar featured scientists and breeders from Italy, Ireland, Canada, China, and the Netherlands.

The reason for this webinar was the paper in Nature Genetics of  6 January 2022  about the identification of the PAR gene, by an international team of scientists from KeyGene, Wageningen University & Research, the Japanese breeding company Takii and New Zealand’s Plant & Food Research, and Lincoln University.

The identification of the PAR gene, together with the DIP gene, earlier described by KeyGene scientists, will hopefully be the starting point for the successful application of apomixis in many important crops during the next decade.

During this KeyGene webinar, Rik Op den Camp presented and discussed the findings of the international team, published in Nature Genetics on 6 January 2022. Other apomixis and plant reproduction experts from science and breeding will present their work and views

After the presentations, questions from the audience were answered by an international panel, together with the speakers and moderated by KeyGene’s CEO Arjen van Tunen. Here, subjects like limiting factors, crops within reach, and the possibilities for inducing and identifying the needed genotypes were discussed.

View the recording of the webinar

Program:

• Introduction to the webinar and its context, Arjen van Tunen, CEO KeyGene
• Reproduction of plants: an exciting field of research and opportunities, Prof Lucia Colombo, University of Milan (also known as La Statale), Italy
• Booster for apomixis: PAR and DIP genes, Rik Op den Camp, KeyGene
• Induction of apomixis in Brassica using tools developed from the apomictic Boechera complex, Prof Tim Sharbel, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
• Synthetic apomixis in rice, Prof Kejian Wang, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences CAAS
• Panel discussion, moderated by Arjen van Tunen. Panel members: Prof Charles Spillane, Director of the Ryan Institute, National University of Ireland Galway, Prof Eric Schranz, Dept. Biosystematics, Wageningen University & Research; Peter van Dijk, KeyGene

Access to the paper in Nature Genetics

KeyGene and the other partners value the open access to the paper which is the reason for this webinar. For all papers submitted to Nature Genetics at the moment we submitted the manuscript, open access was not possible yet. Therefore we have bought temporary access (till January 2023) to e-prints of the paper.

To access your ePrint, please click on the article title below:

Nature Genetics
A PARTHENOGENESIS allele from apomictic dandelion can induce egg cell division without fertilization in lettuce

Read more:

• Asexual reproduction through seeds: the complex case of diplosporous apomixis (2023), Letizia Cornaro, Camilla Banfi, Mara Cucinotta, Lucia Colombo & Peter J van Dijk, Journal of Experimental Biology, February 2023, subscription needed