Ancient Roots, Modern Breeding
The first series of webinars has brought together diverse current perspectives on plant breeding, from archaeological insights to data-driven innovation and regulatory frameworks.
The newly launched webinar series of NRP 84 opened with Professor Natalie Mueller offering an archaeological perspective on domestication, breeding and plant evolution. She emphasised that domestication unfolded gradually over thousands of years through ecological interactions between people, plants, landscapes and cultures. In contrast, modern breeding, especially gene editing, occurs mainly in laboratories. Her work underscores that evaluating new breeding technologies requires acknowledging both benefits and risks, and situating technological advances within complex agroecological and socioeconomic systems.
In the following webinar, Professor Hans Dätwyler explored how data can support breeders in turning complex information into practical decisions. He highlighted the growing availability of data and the challenge of translating this information into robust and actionable decisions. Prof Dätwyler illustrated how analytical and computational approaches can improve selection processes, enhance efficiency and help manage increasing biological and environmental complexity. The discussion addressed practical aspects of implementation, including data quality, access to expertise and infrastructure, and the conditions that enable breeders to effectively adopt new approaches in practice.
In the last webinar before the summer break, Anna Borràs and Ilaria Ciabatti from the European Commission provided an overview of the current EU proposal to regulate new genomic techniques in plant breeding. They outlined the existing EU GMO legislation and explained why recent scientific developments have challenged its adequacy. The new proposal would introduce a two-tier system distinguishing between plants treated similarly to conventional crops, and plants that remain subject to adapted GMO rules. The following discussion touched on implementation challenges, including detection methods, thresholds for genetic modifications and international regulatory divergence.
Please visit the event section of www.nrp84.ch for information on upcoming webinars as it becomes available.