Yearly Report Platform Plant Breeding, July 2017 – June 2018 · Yearly Report Platform Plant Breeding, July 2017 – June 2018 ”SLUs fakultetsgemensamma ämnesområde Växtförädling”

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September 2018

Yearly Report Platform Plant Breeding, July 2017 – June 2018

”SLUs fakultetsgemensamma ämnesområde Växtförädling” is one of three ”fakultetsgemensamma ämnesområden” set up by SLU’s Vice Chancellor from 1 January 2014, involving S, NJ and LTV faculties (Dnr SLU ua 2013.1.1.1-5722).

The steering committee members are Inger Åhman (LTV; Chair), Harry Wu (S; Vice chair), Ove Nilsson (S), Mariette Andersson (LTV), Anna Westerbergh (NJ) and Pär Ingvarsson (NJ).

Katja Fedrowitz is working as a coordinator for the platform since October 2017.

“Plant breeding” is defined broadly, including research that can improve genotyping, phenotyping, gene transfer and selection methods, and increase genetic variation.

Below are described the plant breeding platform’s committee meetings and achievements between July 2017 and June 2018.

Committee meetings

Date Place Major achievements and decisions 2017.08.31 Video Coordinator

Katja Fedrowitz will be hired as coordinator to help with administrative duties of the platform. Her work time will be shared with the Platform Plant Protection (half time for each platform). Seed money projects The platform will fund 12 seed money projects (500 kSEK each) in two calls, one in autumn 2017 and one in autumn 2018. Project applications will be evaluated using a group consisting of three evaluators, one selected by each faculty. Meetings and workshops The platform aims to arrange a common two-day workshop with the other SLU platforms (plant protection, crop production systems). The plan is to have one day of common activities and allow for a second day with platform-specific programming. AW and PI are responsible for organising this from the plant breeding platform side. A common symposium with Wageningen is planned for 2019 with the goal of including PhD students, postdocs and senior researchers. Initial contacts will be made with Wageningen to assess interest by HW. A final evaluation workshop (year 6 of the project) will be held in Umeå. HW and ON will arrange this.

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Travel grants Money to cover costs for visits to other campuses will be available on a first come first serve basis to all levels (technicians, PhD students, postdocs, senior researchers). Call will be announced through newsletter and decisions on applications are made by IÅ. Courses One course per year will be organised through the platform. In 2018, the topic will be ‘Bioinformatics’. HW with help from PI will organise. In 2019, the tentative subject is ‘Phenotyping’. In 2020 there will be a course on ‘Genomic selection’, tentatively organised by HW and PI. Publications An updated version of the popular science publication is scheduled for 2020. Budget Funding is set aside for one ‘in person’ committee meeting per year, the rest are held through teleconferencing. Remaining money not budgeted for (~0.5 MSEK, depending on how much is left from the former period; right now it is ~1.5 MSEK but we have budgeted for 9.8 MSEK in the coming 3 years i.e. to use 0.8 MSEK from the former period) are left as a ‘strategic resource’ to be used by the committee as needed throughout the three years of the project.

2017.11.21 Video Given that the new competence centre in plant breeding at SLU will work with stakeholders, the platform’s focus will be even more SLU-intern in the future. Coordinator Katja Fedrowitz has started her work as a coordinator for the platform in October 2017. She is working 20% for the Platform Plant Breeding and 20% for the Platform Plant Protection, but may work more in the future, for both platforms. Seed money projects It was decided that the evaluation committee will consist of the following members: Jan-Erik Hällgren (S-fak), Sara von Arnold (NJ-fak), and Roland von Bothmer (LTV-fak). The idea is that the evaluation committee will suggest the ranking of the applications and that the steering committee only needs to approve this. The steering group agreed that the ranking should be primarily based on the fulfilment of the specifications in the call text. Cross-faculty project collaboration is a must for the application to be taken into consideration. After that the ranking should be done as in any regular grant application, i.e. competence and feasibility, scientific quality and novelty should be taken into account. Courses

• Instead of the Phenotyping course in 2019, the platform is now financing the travel/lodging for one lecturer at the NOVA PhD course “Phenotyping Technologies in Plant-environment Interactions – Integrated Analysis of Omics Data”, as well as travel and lodging costs for SLU students from other campuses

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than Alnarp. The course will be held in June 2018 in Alnarp. Course organizer: Erik Alexandersson.

• SLU Bioinformatics Workshop: High Throughput Sequencing DNA-Seq and RNA-Seq Analysis for Plant Breeding. Organizer: HW. The course will take place from March 12-March 23, 2018.

Seminar concerning the new competence centre The platform is paying for the streaming of a seminar in Ultuna, arranged by the Swedish Seed Association on the 22/11 concerning the new competence centre for plant breeding.

2018.02.13 Video Seed-money projects The committee decided to finance six projects out of 20 applications, based on the ranking made by the evaluators. The evaluators will be reimbursed with 10 000 kr each. Common workshop(s) of three platforms Pär, Inger and Katja attended a meeting of the three platforms (Plant Breeding, Plant Protection, Cropping Systems) on the 12th of February 2018. All committees will have to decide if their respective platform is taking part in one or more common workshops. Platform Plant Breeding wants to have these workshops if the other platforms also accept. 200 000 kr are allocated in the budget for 2018 for such. Cooperation with the new centre (Kompetenscentrum för växtförädling) Grogrund is the name for the new centre. The steering group is in place, but the advisory group is still to be decided. The role of the platform in relation to the centre is not totally clear. Employment of person to work with policy issues related to the Nagoya protocol Platform Plant Breeding will finance Dennis Eriksson for 20% work time until June 2020 to work with policies, regulations and other legal issues in relation to plant genetic resources. He will be taking a course at Wageningen University this spring which will cost about 35 000 kr financed with strategic money from the platform. The aim of his work will be to develop a coherent approach and routines for handling plant genetic resources within SLU, providing long-term reinforcement of the competence for genetic resources policies and regulations related to access and benefit sharing and intellectual property.

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2018.05.31 Video Common platform workshop, 20-21 September, Alnarp There will be a workshop organized by all three platforms together (Plant Breeding, Plant Protection, Cropping Systems). The organizing committee includes Pär Ingvarsson, Inger Åhman, Erik Steen Jensen, Jan Stenlid and Katja Fedrowitz. Three researchers have been invited to give inspirational and provoking talks – Malin Elfstrand, Johan Stenberg and Göran Bergkvist. The workshop will contrast annual and perennial crops, including study visits at field sites in Alnarp. There will be time for discussions and hopefully new collaborations will start. Meeting in Wageningen in 2019 The meeting will take place on June 11-13, approx. from lunch to lunch to facilitate traveling on the same day. Up to 200 people will take part in the meeting, max 50 persons from Sweden and about 150 from Wageningen. Besides presentations, there will be short study visits, not to the labs as they look similar, but e.g. to a big new phenotyping facility. Wageningen University will probably take a small fee from their participants. Final organizing group is still to be decided. The Swedish organizing group will take care of the Swedish delegates; Wageningen will take care of the delegates from Wageningen. If more than 50 people from SLU want to attend the meeting, there should not be more than 20 from a single faculty. Otherwise first comes first serves. This needs to be made clear in the announcement. Courses HW will organize a course in Quantitative genetics in spring 2019. The committee decides that this course will be funded by the platform. The course will be held in Uppsala. In spring 2020 there will be a course in Genomic selection. Travel grants to other SLU campuses Two applications have been approved so far, in total ca. 3 000 kr out of 50 000 kr used. Employment of Dennis to work with policy issues related to the Nagoya protocol The formal decision has now been made (in Swedish) that Dennis will work with policy issues related to the Nagoya protocol and plant genetic resources. Dennis will officially start to work with this on 1st of June, at 20% of his work time. Katja – course in workshop leading The committee supports that Katja will attend a 2-day course in workshop leading, with the aim to be able to assist the platforms in coming workshops. The total cost is approx.14 000 kr and will be shared by all three platforms.

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Post doc projects

The platform financed three postdoc projects (2015-2018). Each faculty had the main mentorship for one of the postdoc positions. Linked to the projects were also mentors from other faculties. A final report of all projects was received by the platform by the end of March 2018.

The three projects, postdocs and mentors: - Reproductive development and early cone-setting in Norway spruce Veronika Nordal Jens Sundström (NJ), Sara von Arnold (NJ), Ove Nilsson (S)

- SLU Plant breeding and genetic resources enhancement informatics Sandeep Kumar Kushwaha Rodomiro Ortiz (LTV), Anders Carlsson (LTV), Erik Andreasson (LTV), Erik Alexandersson (LTV), Eugene Savenkov (NJ)

- Optimizing Plant Breeding Strategies Using Genome-wide Dense Marker

Data Henrik Hallingbäck (NJ) Harry Wu (S), Larisa Gustavsson (LTV), Anna Westerbergh (NJ)

PhD student/Post doc courses

- NOVA PhD course “Phenotyping Technologies in Plant-environment Interactions – Integrated Analysis of Omics Data”

June 2018, Alnarp Organizer: Erik Alexandersson

The scores for various aspects of the course were between 4.4 and 5.7 on a scale 1-6. There were 21 participants, out of which 6 were from SLU (1 Umeå, 1 Uppsala, 4 Alnarp).

- High Throughput Sequencing DNA-Seq and RNA-Seq Analysis for Plant Breeding

March 2018, Umeå Organizer: HW The course was a success. Out of 35 registered people, 32 turned up. The attendees were very satisfied.

Infrastructure

No activities except that the travel grant is made possible for travelling to other campuses to use their infrastructure.

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Budget follow up for the first three years

From the start mid 2014 until end of June 2018, ca 8.7 million crowns have been used. Since the six Seed money projects are paid for monthly, there will be another 1.5 million used for those during 2018.

Communication

Platforms website www.slu.se/plattformvaxtforadling; www.slu.se/platformplantbreeding Katja has the administrative rights to make changes on the website. Mariette is the contact person for discussing ideas and text. Everyone else in the steering group is also welcome to contribute with ideas. The plattform got a “tag” (“Plattform växtförädling”). If people use this tag when creating sites for news and activities at SLU’s website then these events and news will come up automatically at the platforms website. Email-group The platform has started an email-group with the name [email protected]. All the ca 100 members of the group can use this email-address for sending information to the others. Newsletter The platform has also started to have a newsletter approximately 2-4 times per year that will inform its members on ongoing activities and news from the platform and within plant breeding at SLU in general. During the period, four Newsletters have been sent out. Outreach IÅ presented the role of Platform Plant breeding at a meeting organised by the Swedish Seed Association at Ultuna 22 November 2017. The meeting was mainly focussing on Grogrund and it was suggested that Grogrund takes the lead in outreach information about SLU’s plant breeding research so that there is mainly one channel for this. In another meeting organised by the Swedish Seed Association 14 June 2018, Inger Åhman informed about the six Seed money projects financed by the platform. Logo The platform has now a logo that can be used in all documents that are produced by the platform.

Poster A poster in both English and Swedish about the platform has been produced. Appendices

- Poster in English and Swedish - Budget

Plattform växtförädlingPlatform Plant Breeding

CommitteeInger Åhman (chair), Harry Wu (vice chair), Anna Westerbergh, Mariette Andersson, Ove Nilsson, Pär Ingvarsson

TARGET GROUP• Researchers

• PhD students

• Other centres at SLU

[email protected]

Stay informed!

International exchangeTravel

grants

Postdocs2015–2018

Funding 2014–2020 (6 years)

Workshops

PhD/ post doc courses

• Minimize risk for overlapping work in research & education

• Make use of common resources & complementary competences

• Support collaboration between groups from different geograp-hic & organizational units

• Strengthen SLU’s profile in plant breeding

Email-group

Newsletter

Are you working in the area of plant breeding?

AIM

Seed money

www.slu.se/platformplantbreedingTravel grants CoursesNews Calender Calls

So do more than 100 colleagues of yours at SLU!

www.slu.se/platformplantbreeding

Foto: Inger Åhman, SLU Alnarp

Foto: Inger Åhman, SLU Alnarp

Foto: Inger Åhman, SLU Alnarp

Plattform växtförädlingPlatform Plant Breeding

KommittéeInger Åhman (ordförande), Harry Wu (biträdande ordförande), Anna Westerbergh, Mariette Andersson, Ove Nilsson, Pär Ingvarsson

Målgrupp• Forskare

• Doktorander

• Centra vid SLU

[email protected]

Kurser för postdocs & doktorander

Workshops

Internationella utbyten

Hemsidawww.slu.se/plattformvaxtforadling

Är du intresserad av forskning &aktiviteter inom växtförädling vid SLU?

Stimulera och stödja sam-arbeten mellan SLU:s olika verksamhetsorter samt över fakultetsgränser.

Syfte

Uppstarts-projekt

www.slu.se/plattformvaxtforadling

Över 100 forskare

vid SLU

Postdoc projekt

2015–2018

Plattformen finansierar (2014-2020)

Foto: Inger Åhman, SLU Alnarp

Foto: Inger Åhman, SLU Alnarp

Foto: Inger Åhman, SLU Alnarp

Resebidrag