2025 Cornell Corteva Symposium: Maintaining Genetic Diversity

Maintaining Genetic Diversity: Conserving and Utilizing Wild Relatives of Common Crops

14th Annual Cornell Corteva Plant Breeding Symposium
Friday, April 11, 2025
Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, New York
8:30 am - 5:30 pm
Hosted by Synapsis,  the Cornell University Plant Breeding & Genetics Graduate Student Association
Sponsored by Corteva Agriscience

Summary

Wild relatives of crop species provide vast genetic diversity to be utilized in plant breeding efforts through studying and introgressing traits for: biotic resistance and abiotic stress tolerance, nutrition profiles, aesthetics, and more. Despite the importance of maintaining this genetic diversity, many wild crop relatives are threatened due to habitat loss, disease, and climatic changes. 

Registration

Register online by Friday April 4 to guarantee that your lunch is provided.

Program

Schedule subject to change. Download printer-friendly .pdf of schedule with speaker bios and abstracts.

• 8:30 am           Coffee and light breakfast, networking
• 9:15 am           Opening remarks with Bhaswati Sarmah and Jason Rauscher
   
• 9:30 am         
  Greg Vogel, Cornell University
  Bridging the past and the future: leveraging wild and vintage tomatoes in trait improvement
   
• 10:25 am         
  Albert Radloff, University of Minnesota
  Family drama: Leveraging half-sib families to determine population structure, phenotypic variation, and inform domestication of a green pesticide crop
   
• 11:00 am          Coffee break
   
• 11:30 am         
  Igor Falak, Corteva: 
  The role of Brassica diversity in canola breeding
   
• 12:25 pm          Lunch
   
• 1:25 pm           
  Colin Khoury, San Diego Botanic Garden
  Distributions, conservation status, and conservation actions for North American crop wild relatives
   
• 2:20 pm          
  Addy Carroll, Colorado State University
  Improvement of quantitative traits in elite wheat breeding germplasm through introgression from Triticum dicoccoides via a wheat-Aegilops synthetic octoploid bridge
   
• 2:55 pm           Coffee break
   
• 3:25 pm          
  Samantha J. Snodgrass, University of California Davis
  Maize and wild relatives show distinct patterns of genome downsizing following polyploidy
   
• 4:20 pm           Closing remarks
• 4:30 pm           Happy hour

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