Plant Success

WIPO Treaty on TKGR 2024: Constructing Guidelines for Disclosure and ABS
2024-12-10 18:00 - 19:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Uma Suthersanen, Professor of Global Intellectual Property Law at the Queen Mary University of London
In May 2024, a new international treaty was adopted which introduced a new, and hitherto controversial, norm namely the international obligation for applicants to disclose the source or origin of genetic resources (GR) and/or the associated traditional knowledge (TK) in patent applications (Article 3). In its aims, this disclosure mechanism promotes: (i) “the efficacy, transparency and quality of the patent system”, while not unduly burdening patent offices, in addition to the requisite examination of novelty/inventive step that all patent offices must conduct under the global norms (TRIPs Agreement); (ii) preventing the grant of patents erroneously; and (iii) national compliance of obligations under international and national access and benefit sharing (ABS) regulations to ensure that users of TKGRs comply with the requirements for access to GRs, including prior informed consent and benefit sharing under mutually agreed terms.
However, the Treaty stresses that the sole fact of a failure to disclose will not allow Contracting Parties to “revoke, invalidate, or render enforceable” patent rights. (Article 5(3)). Post grant sanctions are allowed in cases of “fraudulent intent”. This ambivalent attitude towards sanctions permits contracting parties considerable flexibility in the implementation of the disclosure mechanism.
My presentation will focus on this ambivalence, especially in light of the following three questions. First, what is the trigger for the disclosure mechanism to apply? Specifically, what does “based on” TKGR mean in relation to a complex and multiple patent applications? Second, does the disclosure mechanism include digital sequence information (DSI)? (Articles 8 and 9). Finally, what is the point of the international disclosure mechanism without revocation or invalidity procedures/results? Specifically, how do we interpret the opaque references to “fraudulent intent” in disclosure? In looking at these questions, one should be cognisant of the readiness of national patent systems to incorporate such disclosure mechanisms (including the availability of accessible databases, monitoring, opposition proceedings, etc), the coherence of disclosure/sanctions mechanisms within this treaty, as well as the CBD/Nagoya protocol, the WIPO Patent Law Treaty (art. 10, PLT), and the lessons learnt from other patent systems (e.g. US Bayh-Dohl’s failure on disclosure requirements).

Biography
Professor Suthersanen holds a Chair in Global Intellectual Property Law and was the Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute until 2024. Her research encompasses legal, socio-economic, and comparative aspects of intellectual and intangible property. Professor Suthersanen has served as a consultant and given evidence to international and regional bodies including WIPO, UNESCO, UNCTAD, European Parliament, European Commission, and the Governments of Israel and Singapore. More recently, she was invited to sit as a WIPO expert on the Ad hoc Committee on traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, IGC 46, 2023 and served as a consultant to the WIPO Division on Traditional Knowledge during the Diplomatic Conference 2024 leading to the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge.
Home page: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/law/people/academic-staff/items/suthersanen.html
About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.

Talking Plant Science: Vanessa Adams
2024-11-13 11:00 - 12:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture is proud to bring you the next seminar in our Talking Plant Science series presented by Associate Professor Vanessa Adams.
The good, the bad and the ugly: the dynamics of plant species retention in the landscape
Successful conservation of plants depends upon an understanding of the biogeography of species; how actions can counteract threats to species loss and maintain natural assemblages of species; and the social values placed on these systems and how this influences communities and individuals to support these actions (or not). Thus, conservation and environmental management sit at the cross-section of physical and human geography and effective action will leverage knowledge from both. This talk will present what we know about the good, bad and ugly of plant retention in the landscape, historic drivers causing the ugly, and future looking solutions that can leverage the good. Lastly – it will pose the question of how can we prioritize actions (e.g. in stu or ex situ conservation, restoration or protection) to maximise species retention taking into account land use changes, climate change, and complex interactions between these?

Associate Professor Vanessa Adams
Dr Vanessa Adams is an Associate Professor in Conservation and Planning and ARC Future Fellow at the University of Tasmania. Her research focuses on modelling dynamic social-ecological systems to inform conservation decisions that improve ecosystems and the communities they support. This means her research is broadly aligned with three themes: ecological modelling (to understand dynamic ecosystems), socio-economic aspects of conservation (to understand the human dimensions of social-ecological systems), and conservation decision theory (to inform decision making). Vanessa was raised in New Mexico (USA) but now calls Australia home. She has worked in a variety roles ranging from actuarial analyst for global consulting firm Mercer HR to research scientist at universities. She spent a year as a Fulbright scholar conducting research at University of Queensland in 2004 and completed her PhD at James Cook University in 2011. During her PhD she was awarded a Sir Keith Murdoch fellowship through the American Australian Association to support a component of her research conducted in Fiji modelling costs of conservation actions to local fishermen. Vanessa partners with relevant government agencies and NGOs to ensure that her research is relevant to policy makers and is positioned to influence on-ground conservation.

Rethinking biodiversity-based economies for justice and conservation
2024-11-12 17:00 - 18:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Rachel Wynberg, DST/NRF Bio-Economy Chair and Professor in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, the University of Cape Town and Dr. Sarah Laird, Co-Director, People and Plants International, the University of Kent.
Rachel Wynberg and Sarah Laird presently co-direct a process of “rethinking” the relationship between conservation and equity, and the biodiversity-based economy, including access and benefit-sharing. https://rethinking-abs.org/
Access and benefit sharing (ABS) is a policy approach that links access to genetic resources and traditional knowledge to the sharing of monetary and non-monetary benefits. It first found expression in the 1992 UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), but is also part of the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework (PIP), and the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It spans a wide range of sectors and issues, including equity in scientific research, conservation of biodiversity, and support for traditional knowledge and Indigenous and local stewards of biodiversity.
Multiple laws and policies are now in place across the world to implement ABS. While this might signal progress, questions remain about their efficacy. Typically, these laws and associated benefit-sharing agreements serve as legal compliance mechanisms that justify a ‘business as usual’ approach without fundamentally changing power relations or economic disparities. Moreover, while science and technology have transformed dramatically over the lifetime of ABS, including an exponential increase in the use of genetic sequence data – or digital sequence information (DSI) – ABS approaches have remained largely static and have narrowed to a transactional effort to channel financial benefits, with few addressing the relationship between benefit sharing, social justice, poverty alleviation, and biodiversity conservation. Rather than enhance scientific collaboration and capacity building, such policy efforts have often had a restrictive effect.
Despite a substantial investment of funding, capacity and resources, and a plethora of laws and studies, ABS has met with surprisingly little analysis as an approach to promote equity in science, remedy past and current injustices, and conserve biodiversity. It also remains fixed in pro-growth strategies to achieve conservation and development that are now well recognised to have failed. Our presentation aims to take a step back, and to think anew about models of development that underpin ABS and more transformative approaches to achieve justice and conservation in biodiversity-based economies. We will address the limitations of “benefit sharing” that does not include paying attention to power imbalances and inequities – and ask how we can think in more innovative ways about paradigms that de-emphasize scale and global markets, measure impact differently, and enable long-overdue recognition for other ways of knowing and being. We believe there is a great deal that has been learned over the years on ABS, biotrade and non-timber forest products, equitable research partnerships and commercialization, conservation and in other areas. But moving forward, laws must be more strategic, and they must accommodate vastly complex social, cultural, economic, and ecological conditions, as well as a dramatically changing world – in science and technology, business, severely threatened biodiversity, and in culture and society.

Biography – Rachel Wynberg
Rachel Wynberg is a Professor in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town in South Africa where she holds a government-funded Research Chair focused on Environmental and Social Dimensions of the Bio-economy. With a background in both the natural and social sciences, she has a strong interest in inter- and trans disciplinarity and policy engagement across the humanities, arts and sciences. Her research spans topics relating to just, ethical and biodiverse bio-economies; seeds, farmers’ rights and agrobiodiversity; knowledge politics; agroecology and food sovereignty; the governance of wild species; and emerging technologies and equity in science.
As a scholar-activist and policy analyst, she has been involved in research and policy-making relating to biodiversity use and commercialisation since the inception of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992, advising governments, civil society organisations and international agencies. She continues to be actively involved with policy debates and civil society movements in southern Africa and globally, serving on the Boards of several NGOs, including Biowatch South Africa and the Union for Ethical Biotrade. She is an elected member of the Academy of Science in South Africa, and was a member of the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (HLP) Expert Group and a lead author for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Sustainable Use assessment.
Further information can be found at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachel_Wynberg and at www.bio-economy.org.za
Biography – Sarah Laird
Dr. Sarah A. Laird is a forester and ethnobiologist by training. Her interests cover a range of inter-related issues, including forest-based traditional knowledge and livelihoods, biodiversity policy, emerging technologies, and the ethical and conservation dimensions of the commercial use of biodiversity.
Since the 1990s, Sarah has collaborated with communities around Mt Cameroon on ethnobiological research and knowledge exchange programs to support and conserve threatened traditional management practices and cultural forests. Her current policy work includes that on the ethical and conservation implications of transformative scientific and technological advances, particularly within the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Sarah holds a BA in History from McGill University, an MSc in Forestry from Oxford University, and a PhD in Ethnobiology from the University of Kent.
She is Co-Director of People and Plants International (www.peopleandplants.org) and a Research Associate with the University of Cape Town’s Bioeconomy Chair (https://bio-economy.org.za/biodiversity-research/). Her publications can be found at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sarah_Laird.
About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.

Genotype by Environment by Management (GxExM) Symposium III
2024-10-30 09:00 - 2024-10-31 17:00 (Europe/Amsterdam) | Zoom
Event information
In collaboration with Wageningen University & Research the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success is coordinating a hybrid (in-person and online) symposium on October 30 and 31 in Wageningen, Netherlands. The symposium will focus on a range of topics related to the study of Genotype by Environment by Management (GxExM) interactions and their importance for crop improvement.
The symposium will be conducted to stimulate new approaches, building on a foundation of sharing understanding and insights from case studies, leading to discussion of ideas that will advance experimental, modelling and prediction methods to enhance crop improvement strategies.
More information about the event is available on the Wageningen University website >
The presentations and discussions during the symposium will be recorded (whenever permission is granted) and made available online, to improve accessibility for all participants. If you have any questions about the format of the meeting or your potential for involvement, please contact fred.vaneeuwijk@wur.nl.
See event flyer here>
Recordings of the event can be found on the Plant Success YouTube Channel >
GxExM Background
The potential importance of GxExM interactions has been considered for many performance properties of agricultural systems. There are complex and growing pressures acting upon the global crop systems on which we depend for our livelihoods.
Universally, significant yield gaps have been identified between potential and realised on-farm crop productivity for most crop systems. Further, the sustainability of the current and required levels of crop productivity to meet the expectations of future needs are continually questioned.
The challenges are diverse, complex and multi-faceted. Crop breeders seek to utilise available genetic resources to develop improved cultivars.
Crop agronomists seek to define agronomic management practices that will work for the improved cultivars.
Farmers seek to combine the improved cultivars with appropriate agronomic practices to achieve a target on-farm productivity while balancing short and long-term risks and rewards.
There have been and continue to be many calls for integrated efforts.
There are successful examples of integrated efforts between breeders, agronomists in partnership with farmers. A number of such efforts have emphasised the importance of considering the potential influences of GxExM interactions at multiple levels within the crop systems.

People-Plant Interrelationships and the Law – but whose law? Expanding the conversation through Ethnobiology and Biocultural Ethics
2024-10-23 09:00 - 10:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Dr. Kelly Bannister, Co-Director, POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria.
“Variety is the spice of life” is a well known phrase that can be traced back to a poem called The Task published in 1785 by William Cowper. Little did Cowper know that he was onto something bigger than just pleasure! A couple of centuries later, scientists tell us that variety – in the form of biological diversity or ‘the variety of life on earth in all its forms and interactions’ – is essential for the very continuance of humankind. We also know from interdisciplinary fields such as ethnobiology that cultural diversity and linguistic diversity (specifically Indigenous cultures and languages) are inextricably linked with the world’s biological diversity – and that all are facing imminent risk amid the complex social-and ecological crises of our time.
Recognizing the vital role that diversity has in our future on earth necessarily invites complexities into conversations about entanglements of “people, plants and the law.” For example, how might the conversation diversify by adding an “s” to “law” and to “people,” intentionally considering Indigenous laws and laws of Nature alongside colonial law? And what of the entanglements between law and ethics, given in some legal traditions there is no distinction? The conversation might shift, in ways that are messy, difficult, inconvenient – but perhaps also interesting and productive?
This presentation offers a conversation-widening perspective on plants, peoples and laws based in biocultural diversity research and ethics policy development in Canada, drawing from recent spicy decades in ethnobiology and related fields seeking to collaborate across Western and Indigenous systems of knowledge, laws and ethics.

Biography
Kelly Bannister is Co-Director of the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the Centre for Global Studies (University of Victoria, B.C. Canada), an instructor with the Institute for Zen Leadership (Wisconsin, USA) and an independent consultant. She has a Ph.D. in Botany (Ethnobotany and Phytochemistry) and did postdoctoral studies in applied ethics. Her lifelong interest in the ethics of biocultural research was seeded during her doctoral studies in the mid-late 1990s, which was the ‘peak’ of biodiversity prospecting based on Indigenous knowledge, amid intense global controversy over appropriation of Indigenous knowledge and protection of Indigenous intellectual property and biocultural heritage rights. She has been involved in ethics policy development locally, nationally and internationally ever since, examining the role of voluntary and soft law instruments (e.g., ethical codes, community protocols, research agreements, consent arrangements) to address power relations and facilitate equitable practices in collaborative research involving Indigenous knowledge. Kelly is devoted to understanding if and how we can work well across diverse worldviews, wisdom traditions, legal orders and knowledge systems to address the pressing social, cultural and ecological issues and inequities of our time. Her current work in biocultural ethics and embodied ethical praxis is informed by Indigenous and relational ethics, as well as conflict resolution, intercultural communication, somatic movement, martial arts and Zen. Beyond her intrigue with people-plant interrelationships, she is deeply interested in what influences and governs how we treat one another and the natural world, across cultures, species and generations.
Home page: https://www.uvic.ca/research/centres/globalstudies/people/staff/bannisterkelly.php
About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.

Talking Plant Science: Daniela Bustos-Korts
2024-09-27 09:00 - 10:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture is proud to bring you the next seminar in our Talking Plant Science series presented by Associate Professor Daniela Bustos-Korts.
From trait dynamics to GxE for the target trait: Utilizing Stay Green and Multiple Physiological Traits for Enhanced Wheat Adaptation to Contrasting Drought Conditions
Understanding and predicting genotype adaptation to complex stresses such as drought can be significantly enhanced by integrating information from secondary phenotypes. These phenotypes may include various yield components measured at a single time point or encompass trait dynamics over time. The stay green trait, which reflects a genotype’s ability to maintain greener canopies under drought conditions, has emerged as a promising candidate for yield prediction; genotypes exhibiting this trait tend to sustain grain filling rates, resulting in improved yields during drought events. However, modelling these traits presents challenges due to the hierarchical error structure inherent in high-throughput phenotyping, which encompasses measurement, plot, and genotypic errors, alongside the complex dynamics of the trait itself. In this study, we employ one-dimensional and two-dimensional P-splines to disentangle measurement and plot errors from true genotypic signals. This approach enables us to effectively model the dynamics of the stay green trait and its interaction with genotype-by-environment (GxE) effects over time, as demonstrated with a diverse panel of spring wheat grown in contrasting water regimes in Chile.

Associate Professor Daniela Bustos-Korts
Daniela’s main interest is genotype to phenotype modelling to characterize and predict crop adaptation across multiple environments. These modelling approaches integrate physiology, crop modelling and statistics. She works at Universidad Austral de Chile, leading projects about wheat adaptation to dry environments. She also teaches bachelor and postgraduate courses focusing on models to support breeding and agronomic management decisions.

Centre for Plant Success Webinar Series: Daniel Otwani and Hanh Vo
2024-09-26 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Daniel Otwani
Exploring grain filling duration for yield in grain sorghum
Yield increase in sorghum has been achieved by increasing grain number. Scope exists to increase yield by changing grain size, however this has been limited by the negative association between grain size and grain number. Extending the grain filling duration (GFD) has potential to increase grain size without the trade-off with reduced grain number. This study aimed to:

establish a replicable method to estimate GFD in sorghum
establish the extent of genetic variation for GFD in sorghum
establish the association of GFD with other yield determinants in sorghum and
examine the putative value of an extended GFD to sorghum yield across environments

A diverse panel of 904 sorghum genotypes were evaluated in three environments across two years. An improved method of estimating GFD in sorghum is proposed, significant variation in GFD beyond current commercial sorghum hybrids reported, and a simulation of longer GFD and its impact on sorghum yield across Australian environments presented.
Hanh Vo
Identifying genes that are associated with rapid dehydration responses to low humidity
Humidity can vary significantly throughout the day and low humidity causes increased transpiration rate through stomatal pores. In response to low humidity, angiosperms can rapidly synthesise the stress hormone abscisic acid (ABA), which activates mechanisms preventing excessive water loss. Previous studies have indicated that within the ABA biosynthesis pathway, only the genes encoding the rate-limiting enzyme nine-cis-epoxycarotenoid dioxygenase (NCED) are significantly induced within the timeframe of stomatal closure. Despite their critical role, the genetic pathway responsible for the rapid upregulation of NCED genes remains uncharacterised.
To characterise the genes involved, we are using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Plants were exposed to low humidity, and the physiological and gene expression responses at key time points were identified. This research aims to provide insights into the molecular mechanisms of plant stress responses, advancing our understanding of how plants survive in challenging and variable arid environments.
This event is open to Centre Members only. If you are a Centre Member who would like to attend, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org for the Zoom invitation.

National Science Quiz 2024
2024-08-12
The ARC CoE for Plant Success is proud to be a sponsor of the 2024 National Science Quiz!
Hosted by ABC’s Nate Byrne this year’s quiz features top scientists, comedians, and exciting demonstrations. The quiz will be broadcast on YouTube from Monday 12 August. Get ready to test your knowledge and have fun with STEM! Play along at any time at home or at school.
Find out more here: www.nationalsciencequiz.com.au

Talking Plant Science: Jenny Mortimer
2024-08-06 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture is proud to bring you the next seminar in our Talking Plant Science series presented by Associate Professor Jenny Mortimer.
Redesigning plants to support long-term Space exploration and for on Earth sustainability
Humans are planning to explore Space further than ever before, with a return to the lunar surface happening as part of the Artemis III mission in 2026, and with a crewed landing planned for the surface of Mars in the 2030s. Important to this is the ability to support astronauts to thrive in space, as opposed to just survive. Food is a key part of this, and with ~10 tonnes of food required for a 4-person mission to Mars, there is an urgent need to produce food in situ, as well as materials and therapeutics. Growth of plants on planetary surfaces will be in closed environment agriculture (CEA) facilities, similar to vertical farming systems being developed here on Earth. However, plants did not evolve to grow in these environments. Here, I will discuss how we can use the lens of Space to innovate for sustainable agriculture. Beyond that, we can use the strict circular economy of Space to develop robust and sustainable in plantabiomanufacturing, supporting a transition to a bioeconomy .

Associate Professor Jenny Mortimer
Jenny Mortimer is Associate Professor of Plant Synthetic Biology in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine at the University of Adelaide (UoA), Australia, where she is also Deputy Director of the Waite Research Institute. She is Chief Investigator (CI) and UoA node leader of the ARC Centre of Excellence Plants for Space (P4S). She is also an Affiliate Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA, and a Director of Plant Systems Biology at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, USA. After completing her PhD at Cambridge University, UK, she began exploring how engineering the plant cell wall could deliver sustainable and economically viable biofuels: first as a postdoc in Cambridge, then as a research fellow at RIKEN Japan, before joining Berkeley Lab in 2014, and Adelaide in 2021. Her team’s research focuses on understanding and manipulating plant cell metabolism, with a focus on complex glycosylation. The goal is to develop crops which contribute to a sustainable and renewable bioeconomy.
At Adelaide, her group is using synthetic biology to develop new crops for food and materials production in controlled growth environments – including for Space settlement (P4S), applying new agricultural biotechnologies to develop resilient field crops as a CI in the ARC Training Centre for Future Crops Development, and developing Australian feedstocks for sustainable jet fuel as a CI in ARC Research Hub for Engineering Plants to Replace Fossil Carbon. In the US, her group works to reengineer the plant cell wall for the sustainable production of fuels and biochemicals from biomass, and to enhance plant-microbiome interactions for sustainable biomass crop production. She was selected as a World Economic Forum Young Scientist (2016/17), where she contributed to the WEF Code of Ethics for Researchers (widgets.weforum.org/coe), and she is an editor for the journals Plant Cell Physiology and Plant Journal.
You can find out more information on the lab here: mortimerlab.org/

Centre for Plant Success Webinar Series: Chantelle Beagley and Chamilka Ratnayake
2024-08-01 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Chantelle Beagley
Dissecting the genetics of domestication in legumes as a contribution towards a comparative understanding of crop evolution.
Crop domestication is a complex process in which wild species become adapted for human use. Many species in the legume family are important global food crops, but compared to other major crops such as cereals, very little is known about the genetic basis for their domestication. This knowledge is critical for understanding of domestication history, conservation of adaptative mechanisms across phylogenies, and trait interaction and trade-offs. It can also inform crop improvement strategies including neo-domestication and the use of diversity from wild relatives.
My PhD examines the genetic basis for domestication in two major crop legumes, common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) and pea (Pisum spp). I will present an overview of work on a number of different traits (including flowering time, seed size and dormancy) and highlight some of the interesting new insights that have emerged.
Chamilka Ratnayake
Anthocyanin – An alternative to conventional reporter systems (Towards a combinatorial strategy for novel regulatory networks and modified metabolic pathways in Nicotiana benthamiana)
Given that many agronomical plants are polyploids, mixing and matching the biochemical pathways in the allotetraploid model plant Nicotiana benthamiana has an enormous potential to contribute towards expanding the metabolic solution space of crop plants. To study the regulation of metabolic pathways of interest at transcriptional level, we are undertaking a transgene-free genome editing approach to engineer the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway, in a way that differently-hued anthocyanins will function as a reporter system to monitor the gene expression of those selected pathways. Through bioinformatic analyses, we have identified the flavonoid hydroxylase genes in N. benthamiana that are responsible for the different shades of anthocyanins. Moreover, we have generated some stable transformants of different anthocyanin shades by silencing the above genes using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. Subsequently, these colours will be linked to specific metabolic pathways of interest through CRISPR/Cas9-mediated homologous recombination. This novel non-transgenic reporter system will help to overcome the limitations of existing transgene-based plant monitoring systems, enabling real time plant monitoring in field through visual cues to detect and assess the activation and deactivation of metabolic pathways. Furthermore, this study aids to address the constraints faced by a conventional plant breeder as well as a synthetic biologist, bridging the gap in-between.
This event is open to Centre Members only. If you are a Centre Member who would like to attend, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org for the Zoom invitation.

Plant Success Research Retreat 2024
2024-06-18 - 2024-06-19 | The University of Queensland, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia
The fourth annual Plant Success Research Retreat will take place over two days from 18-19 June 2024 in Brisbane, Queensland. The retreat is open to all Centre Members to attend in person and virtual attendance will also be available.

ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success Symposium
2024-06-17 09:00 - 16:00 UTC | The University of Queensland, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia
Event information
Hear from invited speakers and Centre members on their research and discuss opportunities for collaboration. Topics will include genomic prediction for varied environments, phylogenetic comparative analysis, advanced water status measurements for field and lab, and how the Nagoya protocol affects plant research in Australia.
This free event will be held in person at The University of Queensland St Lucia, and online via Zoom.
Recordings from this event are available on YouTube >
Featured speakers

Dr Greg Rebetzke
CSIRO
Greg is a Chief Research Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture and Food, where he contributes to the understanding of genetic and physiological factors affecting water productivity and adapting to changing climates in rainfed winter cereals. His goal is then to deliver elite trait-containing germplasm, and improved phenotyping and genetic methods for trait enrichment in commercial breeding programs.

Professor Jacqueline Batley
University of Western Australia
Jacqui has expertise in the fields of plant molecular biology, genetics and genomics, gained from working in both industry and academia. Her research applies breakthrough biotechnological advances for canola crop improvement, through identification of genomic regions controlling traits, which are being translated to commercial outcomes. Her work had led to new canola cultivars, with enhanced productivity, profit, and yield stability through identification of genes linked to shatter tolerance, blackleg disease resistance and oil quality. She is currently focussing on blackleg resistance in the Brassicaceae and investigating evolution of resistance genes across the plant kingdom.
Professor Charlie Messina
University of Florida
Carlos (Charlie) Messina is a professor of predictive breeding in the Department of Horticultural Sciences. Charlie works with breeders to improve the nutritional value of Florida produce and to reimagine agriculture as a solution to climate change. He also specializes in developing AI for plant breeding, which he believes will enable society to harmonize crop improvement efforts for regenerative agricultural systems that improve human health, nutrient security and adaptation to climate change.

Professor Christine Beveridge
The University of Queensland
The focus of Christine’s research has been the role of plant hormones in regulating and coordinating plant development, particularly shoot architecture. She discovered the plant hormone strigolactone and that sugar signalling is a driver of shoot branching. More recently her focus has shifted to identifying how different genetic and physiological networks work together to control plant productivity. Christine is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture.

Professor Brendan Choat
Western Sydney University
Brendan’s research centres on the physiological ecology of plants with a primary focus on plant hydraulics, water relations and functional anatomy. He has held positions at Harvard University in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis, and Australian National University before moving to the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment. He is editor in chief for the PrometheusWiki Project and on the editorial board of the journal Plant Biology. In 2010 he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers. In 2013, Prof Choat was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship for his work on mapping drought responses in trees.

The presentations and discussions during the symposium will be recorded (whenever permission is granted) and made available online, to improve accessibility for all participants. If you have any questions about the format of the meeting or your potential for involvement, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org.

Centre for Plant Success Webinar Series: Shunichiro Tomura and Taylor Wass
2024-06-06 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Shunichiro Tomura
Ensemble approach for genomic prediction in crop breeding
The application of genomic prediction has increased genetic gain in crop breeding. However, further acceleration across varying environments is required to meet the increasing yield demand. One bottleneck has been a low selection accuracy in genomic prediction models. A variety of models have been developed and evaluated, revealing that their prediction performance remains low and none of them have consistently outperformed others. Other approaches need to be proposed to mitigate such issues, and our research investigates the power of ensembles of multiple prediction models. Conceptually, by combining information for prediction captured by each model, more comprehensive information can be formed as “a collection of wisdoms”, expected to raise prediction performance. We naïvely averaged prediction results from each model, and despite the simplicity, the ensemble approach outperformed other models demonstrating that there is a potential that ensemble modelling approaches can enhance prediction accuracy in crop breeding.
Taylor Wass
A Computational modelling approach to understand shoot architecture
While network structures underpinning determinants of plant architecture have been comprehensively elucidated in the literature, information is lacking regarding how the interplay of these networks and their components translates into the expression of the plant in 3D space. Traditional models of plant architecture fail to consider the physiological context of a given organ when applying growth rules, and as such are unable to portray phenotypic plasticity.
Using an integrative approach featuring our in-house network simulation package PSoup, in concert with functional-structural plant modelling, we aim to develop a platform capable of dynamically representing the state of determinants of plant architecture, such as hormone fluxes or carbon allocation, and applying growth rules based on their values in 3D space. The emergent properties of these models can be used to inform crop models and guide the design of experiments to further understand the mechanisms governing shoot architecture traits, such as branching and flowering.
This event is open to Centre Members only. If you are a Centre Member who would like to attend, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org for the Zoom invitation.

Talking Plant Science: Alex Wu
2024-04-17 11:00 - 12:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture is proud to bring you the next seminar in our Talking Plant Science series presented by Dr Alex Wu.
Crop modelling for informing leaf photosynthesis and crop yield improvement
An increasing global food demand begs new strategy for crop yield improvement. Leaf CO2 assimilation is an important driver of crop growth and yield. However, the translation of leaf photosynthetic manipulation to crop yield performance is less straightforward. Yield is a complex emergent property driven by instantaneous leaf CO2 assimilation, summed over the whole canopy of the crop and across the entire crop life cycle, all interacting with environmental effects on growth and development of the crop. Here, I will present a ‘cross-scale’ crop modelling effort used to develop integrative leaf-to-field modelling tools, offering new predictive capabilities to aid photosynthesis and yield improvement. This: (i) enables in silico field testing of putative strategies for leaf photosynthetic manipulation in target population of environments; (ii) offers a platform for the dissection of crop growth components and identification of key photosynthetic properties for growth enhancement. The two-pronged, but complementary pathways are generating new information on the value proposition of photosynthetic manipulation and informing fundamental and applied research directions, helping to discover and support new strategies for crop yield improvement. Potential synergies with other crop research technologies are discussed.

Dr Alex Wu
Alex Wu is a crop modeller. He completed a postdoc in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis and an ARC DECRA. He is known for his research on modelling leaf photosynthetic CO2 assimilation and field crop yield performance for supporting yield improvement. He has developed in-depth understanding, using cross-scale crop modelling, of two-way interactions between leaf biochemical, canopy structure, and whole crop growth and yield. Alex has generated a priori yield impact assessment of photosynthesis bioengineering of crops, aiding fundamental research for enhancing yield improvement outcomes. He was awarded the Australian Society of Plant Scientist Peter Goldacre Medal in 2020.

Centre for Plant Success Webinar Series: Alicia Hellens
2024-04-11 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Alicia Hellens
Part 1- The transcription factor bZIP11 acts antagonistically with trehalose 6-phosphate to inhibit shoot branching
The ontogenetic regulation of shoot branching allows plants to adjust their architecture in accordance with the environment. This process is due to the regulation of axillary bud outgrowth into branches, which can be induced by increasing sugar availability to the buds through decapitation of the shoot tip. Different sugar signalling components have been identified in the induction of shoot branching. However, the molecular components that maintain bud dormancy in response to sugar starvation remain largely unknown. In this part of the talk I will present findings from one chapter of my PhD, which identified a new model of interactions between sugar signalling molecules, Tre6P, bZIP11, and SNRK1 in the inhibition of axillary shoot branching.
Part 2 – Life beyond a PhD: my first year as a kiwifruit rootstock breeder
Kiwifruit is New Zealand’s largest commercial fruit crop bringing over $8 billion annually via cultivars grown for Zespri. The Kiwifruit Breeding Centre is a joint venture between Zespri and the New Zealand crown research company Plant and Food Research, to provide more kiwifruit better and faster for Zespri. Kiwifruit cultivars that produce desirable fruit do not necessarily have good root systems or resistance to disease. For this reason, commercial kiwifruit plants are not grown from seed but are the result of grafting onto a rootstock. A rootstock can also impact characteristics onto the scion such as low vigour in vegetative growth. In New Zealand there are two commercial rootstock varieties both of which have drawbacks. With a rapidly changing climate it is more vital than ever that rootstocks are bred for current and future environments both in New Zealand but also around the world. Therefore, the rootstock breeding program is focusing on developing new, environmental specific rootstocks targeting desirable, sustainable, traits. In this part of the talk I will give an overview of the kiwifruit breeding pipeline and discuss rootstock-specific traits of interest in our programme.
This event is open to Centre Members only. If you are a Centre Member who would like to attend, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org for the Zoom invitation.

Indigenous and Heirloom Seeds: Stewardship, Sovereignty and Legal Protection
2024-04-10 09:00 - 12:30 (America/Denver) | City High 37 E Pennington St, Tucson, AZ 85701, City High 37 E Pennington St,, Tucson, AZ 85701, AZ, United States
Event information
Intellectual property has been protecting plants and seed in the United States since the 1930s. Over the last century, the reach of intellectual property over seeds and plants has consistently expanded. At the same time, there have been a number of international initiatives that have attempted to regulate how plants and seeds are used and exchanged. The result is a complex and changing legal landscape that impacts the way seeds and plants are used as well as who gets to control and benefit from that use. This workshop will look at techniques used to ensure Indigenous intellectual property, traditional ecological knowledge and traditional crop varieties are protected. We will hear about the key features of intellectual property law and other plant protection and methods that exist in seed stewardship.
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Speakers

Alexandra Zamecnik, Executive Director, Native Seeds/SEARCH
Collaboration, representation and transparency in heirloom seed stewardship: Examples from Native Seeds/SEARCH
Alexandra Zamecnik is the Executive Director of NS/S. She has a Masters in International Relations and has extensive experience working in conservation and natural resources management in Mexico and Central America. She is focused on strengthening NS/S’s policies and practices around seed stewardship and seed sharing.

Dr. Andrea Carter, Director of Agriculture & Education, Native Seeds/SEARCH
Challenges and Opportunities in Southwest Seed Stewardship
Dr. Andrea Carter is the Agriculture, Education & Outreach Director. She serves as a link between the NS/S seed bank and small-scale farmers across the Southwest. She received her PhD in Plant Science from the University of Arizona and focused her research on drought-adapted crops.

Bobby Stone, Board Member, Native Seeds/SEARCH
A life of Farming and Seed Saving in Gila River
Robert Stone is the former Lt. Governor for Gila River Indian Community. He is the vice chair of the NS/S Board of Directors. He is recognized as a spiritual leader, traditional singer, traditional farmer, artist, and indigenous seed and food advocate. Bobby attended Central Arizona College where he earned a degree in Agriculture Technology, and then continued at University of Arizona. Bobby has been a life-long farmer and he maintains a seed bank with an array of indigenous crops.

Dr. Brad Sherman, School of Law, University of Queensland
An Overview of Intellectual property protection for seed
Brad Sherman is UQ Laureate Professor and a member of the ARC Centre for Plant Success at the University of Queensland, Australia where he researches on intellectual property. He is currently working on a history of intellectual property in the citrus industry in California and Arizona.

Dr. Allison Fish, School of Law, University of Queensland
Using public databases to prevent biopiracy of seed
Allison Fish is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Futures at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Allison’s research focuses on the use of law and technology to manage of intangible cultural heritage in India and Australia.

Centre for Plant Success Webinar Series: Tara Kemp
2024-02-22 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Tara Kemp
Realizing partitions as latin squares and cubes
A latin square of order n is a square array in which each of n symbols occurs exactly once in every row and column, similar to a Sudoku puzzle. L. Fuchs posed a question about the existence of quasigroups with disjoint subquasigroups and this problem is equivalent to the existence of latin squares with disjoint subsquares. The existence of these latin squares is a partially solved problem and it can be extended to a problem on latin cubes with disjoint subcubes. In this talk, I will discuss the results that I have found for both latin squares and latin cubes.

This event is open to Centre Members only. If you are a Centre Member who would like to attend, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org for the Zoom invitation.

Centre for Plant Success Webinar Series: Maddie James
2023-11-16 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Maddie James
The role of chromosomal inversions during adaptation
To understand adaptation at the genetic level, researchers typically focus on variation in single nucleotide polymorphisms or gene expression. However, other aspects of the genome also impact how species evolve. Chromosomal inversions, segments of the DNA that are flipped in orientation, can arise within a genome and are known to play a major role during adaptation. For instance, chromosomal rearrangements can link together sets of advantageous alleles, which can facilitate adaptation in certain situations such as in the presence of gene flow. In this talk I will overview what chromosomal inversions are, methods to quantify them, their role during adaptation, how they can impact crop breeding programs, and some empirical evidence of their contribution to the divergent adaptation of Senecio ecotypes.

This event is open to Centre Members only. If you are a Centre Member who would like to attend, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org for the Zoom invitation.

Genotype by Environment by Management (GxExM) Symposium II
2023-11-06 08:30 - 2023-11-07 17:30 UTC | Zoom
Event information
In collaboration with The University of Florida the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success is coordinating a hybrid (in-person and online) symposium on November 6 and 7 in Gainesville, USA. The symposium will focus on a range of topics related to the study of Genotype by Environment by Management (GxExM) interactions and their importance for crop improvement.
The symposium will be conducted to stimulate new approaches, building on a foundation of sharing understanding and insights from case studies, leading to discussion of ideas that will advance experimental, modelling and prediction methods to enhance crop improvement strategies.
In-person attendance is limited and will be assigned on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis, so we encourage you to finalise your attendance plans as soon as possible. The presentations and discussions during the symposium will be recorded (whenever permission is granted) and made available online, to improve accessibility for all participants. If you have any questions about the format of the meeting or your potential for involvement, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org.
View the program >
Register to attend >
Featured speakers

Dr Greg Rebetzke
CSIRO
Dr Greg Rebetzke, Chief Research Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture and Food, contributes to the understanding of genetic and physiological factors affecting water productivity and adapting to changing climates in rainfed winter cereals. His goal is then to deliver elite trait-containing germplasm, and improved phenotyping and genetic methods for trait enrichment in commercial breeding programs.

Professor Christine Beveridge
The University of Queensland
The focus of Christine’s research has been the role of plant hormones in regulating and coordinating plant development, particularly shoot architecture. She discovered the plant hormone strigolactone and that sugar signalling is a driver of shoot branching. More recently her focus has shifted to identifying how different genetic and physiological networks work together to control plant productivity. Christine is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture.

Professor Graeme Hammer
The University of Queensland/Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI)
Graeme conducts research on the physiology and genetics of complex adaptive traits in field crops with a focus on water productivity in cereals. His research underpins the development of mathematical models of crop growth, development and yield that enable simulation of consequences of genetic and management manipulation of crops in specific target environments.

Dr Daniela Bustos-Korts
Universidad Austral de Chile
Daniela’s main interest is genotype to phenotype modelling to characterize and predict crop adaptation across multiple environments. These modelling approaches integrate physiology, crop modelling and statistics. She works at Universidad Austral de Chile, leading projects about wheat adaptation to dry environments. She also teaches bachelor and postgraduate courses focusing on models to support breeding and agronomic management decisions.

Dr Jose Crossa
CIMMYT
Jose Crossa works at the Biometrics and Statistics Unit conducting research on genomic models and models for genomic x environment interaction to help CIMMYT researchers achieve their goals. He also teaches courses on statistical genetics.

GxExM Background
The potential importance of GxExM interactions has been considered for many performance properties of agricultural systems. There are complex and growing pressures acting upon the global crop systems on which we depend for our livelihoods.
Universally, significant yield gaps have been identified between potential and realised on-farm crop productivity for most crop systems. Further, the sustainability of the current and required levels of crop productivity to meet the expectations of future needs are continually questioned.
The challenges are diverse, complex and multi-faceted. Crop breeders seek to utilise available genetic resources to develop improved cultivars.
Crop agronomists seek to define agronomic management practices that will work for the improved cultivars.
Farmers seek to combine the improved cultivars with appropriate agronomic practices to achieve a target on-farm productivity while balancing short and long-term risks and rewards.
There have been and continue to be many calls for integrated efforts.
There are successful examples of integrated efforts between breeders, agronomists in partnership with farmers. A number of such efforts have emphasised the importance of considering the potential influences of GxExM interactions at multiple levels within the crop systems.
View the event flyer >

Centre for Plant Success Webinar Series: Hannah Drieberg and Sivakumar Sukumaran
2023-10-05 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
This event is open to Centre Members only. If you are a Centre Member who would like to attend, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org for the Zoom invitation.

Talking Plant Science: John Passioura
2023-09-05 15:00 - 16:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture is proud to bring you the next seminar in our Talking Plant Science series presented by Dr John Passioura.
Translational Research in Agriculture: How effectively does it work?
‘Translational research’ became an increasingly common term when it was realised that much agriculturally inspired basic research failed to contribute to the improvement of crops. Most of the failure has come from laboratory-based attempts to ameliorate abiotic stresses. Dealing with biotic stress has been much more successful; the control of pests and weeds is often enabled by transforming crops with single genes, for such genes have little or no influence on a crop’s metabolism. By contrast, abiotic stress varies with the weather; i.e. crops respond systemically, over a range of levels of organisation (e.g. organelles, cells, tissues, organs), with many feedbacks and feedforwards. Drought is the most pervasive form of abiotic stress. There are several thousand papers that have searched, ineffectively, for ‘drought resistance’, a term that usually defies useful definition. By contrast, dealing with a limited water supply (e.g. inadequate seasonal rainfall), rather than with ‘drought’, has effectively increased water-limited yield through agronomic innovation based on improving water-use efficiency. A major reason for the predominant failure of translational research from laboratory to field is that the peer-review system is too narrow; i.e. reviewers have the same backgrounds as the authors. Effective translation requires the addition of reviewers who can assess effective pathways from laboratory to field.

Dr John Passioura
John Passioura graduated with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science (1958) followed by a Ph.D. in soil chemistry (1963) from Melbourne University, Australia. He joined CSIRO in 1966 after 3 years as a Postdoc in Europe. He currently holds an emeritus appointment at ANU in Canberra, and was formerly Leader of the Crop Adaptation Program in CSIRO. His research has ranged over: soil chemistry and physics (transport of water and nutrients in soil and uptake by roots); plant physiology (water relations, drivers of growth rate and adaptation to abiotic stresses); and wheat pre-breeding and agronomy directed at improving water-limited productivity of dryland crops. He was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1994. He spent 6 years on partial secondment to the Australian Grains Research and Development Organization (GRDC) where he oversaw a portfolio of projects on soil and water management which aimed at improving both the productivity and environmental performance of Australian grain farms. Since then he has written several reviews relating to crop productivity and the pursuit of effective agricultural research. He has also worked as a consultant to the CGIAR, undertaking high-level reviews of several of their programs, existing or prospective.

National Science Quiz 2023
2023-08-27 15:30 - 17:00 UTC
The ARC CoE for Plant Success is proud to be the convenor of the 2023 National Science Quiz!
Hosted by Charlie Pickering from ABC-TV’s The Weekly and joined by some of Australia’s top scientists with our special guest team captains, each team will battle it out for the honour of being this year’s National Science Quiz champions.
Join in person at The Capitol in Melbourne or watch live online via YouTube. Find out more here: www.nationalsciencequiz.com.au

Shirty Science 'The Most Excellent Science Shirt' Competition
2023-08-15 17:00 - 19:30 UTC
The ARC CoE for Plant Success is proud to be part of the Shirty Science Most Excellent Science Shirt competition!
Ten brilliant minds have collided to create the ultimate fusion of science, creativity, and shirts.
In this captivating YouTube Live event, scientists, and artists from around the country will step onto the virtual stage to pitch their innovative science shirt designs.
From the comfort of your own home, join our host Nate Byrne, ABC Breakfast Weather Presenter, and a panel of esteemed scientific and creative judges. As each new shirt design is revealed and pitched, you will cast your votes. Through the power of mathematics, your votes will help determine The Most Excellent Science Shirt.
Join us for the online launch of the designs this National Science Week! Have your voice heard as we select the most EXCELLENT science shirt. Find out more here.

Talking Plant Science: Michele Holbrook
2023-08-10 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture is proud to bring you the next seminar in our Talking Plant Science series presented by Professor N. Michele Holbrook.
Hydromechanical forces in transpiring leaves: how the reversible collapse of minor vein xylem conduits protects against cavitation
Vascular plants transport water in a metastable state putting their lifeline to the soil at risk of embolism formation. Stomata are essential for protecting xylem from developing potentially damaging tensions, yet angiosperm stomata are mechanically and physiologically constrained in their ability to respond to rapid increases in transpiration rate. Here I discuss how the reversible collapse of xylem conduits in the highest vein orders protects xylem conduits during environmentally-driven fluctuations in transpiration rate. The goal of my talk is to illuminate what happens inside a transpiring leaf and to connect this massive movement of water and energy to the functioning of plants at larger scales.

Professor N. Michele Holbrook
Professor Michele Holbrook studies the physics and physiology of vascular transport in plants with the goal of understanding how constraints on the movement of water and solutes between soil and leaves influences ecological and evolutionary processes. Dr. Holbrook is currently working on questions relating to cavitation, stomatal mechanics, leaf hydraulic design, and xylem evolution.

Centre for Plant Success Webinar Series: Francois Barbier and Peter Crisp
2023-07-27 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Francois Barbier
A sugar signalling network controls shoot branching plasticity
Shoot branching is an extremely plastic developmental process that enables plants to adjust their architecture to their environment. The control of this process is due to a complex regulatory network involving hormones, nutrients and metabolites. Sugar allocation to axillary buds is an important factor that determines the transition from dormancy to bud outgrowth, thereby promoting shoot branching. In this process, sugars are more than a source of carbon and energy, and play signalling roles. We have identified different molecular components and signalling pathways through which sugars control shoot branching. It includes, for example, the enzyme HEXOKINASE1, the sugar signal Trehalose 6-Phosphate or the transcription factor bZIP11. Some of these components interact with hormonal pathways involved in the control of shoot branching, such as strigolactones. These interactions constitute a network that allows plants to fine-tune their architecture in response to environmental changes leading to fluctuations of endogenous sugar levels.
Peter Crisp
Beyond the gene: decoding crop epigenomes
The genomic sequences of crops continue to be produced at a frenetic pace, with the potential to significantly contribute to breeding activities and crop improvement. However, beyond the A, T, C and G in DNA, the epigenome also has the potential to offer new avenues for breeding and improvement. Here we present opportunities to use epigenomic technologies in crop research. DNA methylation is a DNA modification, and variation in DNA methylation can be associated with phenotypic variation. These variants, or ‘epialleles’, could provide markers for selection and can provide information not captured by conventional genetic markers such as SNPs. In addition, despite the advances in genome sequencing and assembly, detailed annotation of plant genomes is now a bottleneck in genomic analysis and an impediment to realizing the full potential of association studies or genome editing for crop improvement. Here, we describe our recently developed approach that uses DNA methylation profiling of a single tissue (e.g. a leaf) to distill a genome down to the relatively small fraction of regions that are functionally valuable for trait variation throughout development. We are using this approach in sorghum, wheat, barley, maize and grapevine to better understand these genomes and identify new opportunities for crop research and improvement.
This event is open to Centre Members only. If you are a Centre Member who would like to attend, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org for the Zoom invitation.

Plant Success Research Retreat 2023
2023-06-21 - 2023-06-23
The third annual Plant Success Research Retreat will take place over three days from 21-23 June 2023 in Cairns, Queensland. The retreat is open to all Centre Members to attend in person but virtual attendance will also be available.

Plant Success Early Career Researcher Development Workshop 2023
2023-06-19 - 2023-06-20
The Centre is hosting an Early Career Researcher Development Workshop on 19 and 20 June 2023 in Cairns, Queensland.

Centre for Plant Success Webinar Series: Christopher Blackman and Kate Johnson
2023-06-08 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Christopher Blackman
Plant drought experiments: why, what, when, where and how?
Drought is a major environmental stress that negatively impacts plant growth and productivity in natural and agricultural systems. Given drought is increasing in intensity with human-induced global heating, there is an urgent need to better understand how plants respond to water-deficit and identify the traits and mechanisms associated with drought adaptation and survival in drought prone environments.
One way to address this need is to run a drought experiment. But How? In this talk, I describe some of the different field-based and experimental approaches researchers (myself included) use to study plant adaptation and plant responses to drought. These include examining trait variation along environmental gradients of moisture availability, long-term field monitoring, reciprocal transplant experiments and field trials, rain-exclusion, and glasshouse experiments. I highlight some of the benefits and challenges of these different approaches and emphasise the need to understand plant physiological processes when running drought related phenotype selection and genetic studies.
Kate Johnson
A trade-off between growth rate and xylem cavitation resistance in Callitris rhomboidea
The ideal plant water transport system is one that both is efficient, and resistant to drought-induced damage (xylem cavitation), however, species rarely possess both. This may be explained by trade-offs between traits, yet thus far, no proposed trade-off has offered a universal explanation for the lack of both highly drought-resistant and highly efficient water transport systems. In our recent paper, we found evidence for a new trade-off, between growth rate and resistance to xylem cavitation, in the canopies of a drought-resistant tree species (Callitris rhomboidea), presenting an alternative the ‘safety vs. efficiency’ hypothesis. I will discuss what we found, what it means and some possible mechanistic explanations for the trade-off. Understanding whether this trade-off exists within and between species will help us to uncover what drives and limits plant drought resistance more broadly.
This event is open to Centre Members only. If you are a Centre Member who would like to attend, please contact admin@plantsuccess.org for the Zoom invitation.

The Beyond Intellectual Property Moment in Historical Context
2023-06-07 16:00 - 17:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Graham Dutfield from the University of Leeds.
In 1996, a book called “Beyond Intellectual Property” was published by International Development Research Centre. A law book written by two people entirely unschooled in law, of whom one is the present speaker, this was hardly a world-changing event. The book was very much of its time, being published soon after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which itself came five centuries to the year after a rather more noteworthy event. That said, talking about the book, not so much what it contains, but about why it was written at all and during the decade it was, can reveal much about a specific moment in time that the book, at least in part, captures. Ten years earlier, this book would never have been written; ten years later it is unlikely it would have been needed. That this book is so much of its time testifies perhaps to a certain uniqueness of the era in which it was produced. As we will see, intellectually, legally, and politically shifts were taking place and interacting with each other in some quite remarkable ways. Certain individuals played a big part in this, and nobody did more than the book’s main author Darrell Posey. For Darrell, the book was a logical and hugely compelling extension both of his scientific work on the ethno-ecological practices of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon, and of his environmental activism. In the end, there was no revolution as such; a five hundred-year legacy is not so easy to counteract. But change did take place and it’s possible the era the book represents did lead to improvements in the status of Indigenous peoples.

Biography
Graham Dutfield is Professor of International Governance at the University of Leeds. As such he has a keen interest, going back several decades, in governance of technology, knowledge and property in the context of such major global challenges as public health, food security, biodiversity conservation, ecosystems management, and climate change.
His research on intellectual property crosses several disciplines, including law, history, politics, economics and anthropology. More general scholarly interests include the law, science and business of creativity and technical innovation from the enlightenment to the present, especially in the life sciences.
Among his most recent publications are a second edition of Dutfield and Suthersanen on Global Intellectual Property Law, and a history of the pharmaceutical industry called That High Design of Purest Gold: A Critical History of the Pharmaceutical Industry, 1880-2020.
About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.

Seeds as deep time technologies
2023-05-02 09:00 - 10:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Courtney Fullilove from Wesleyan University.
This talk aims to unite diverse insights in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences by theorizing seeds as deep time technologies. Regarding the seed as a technology allows us to understand actors and processes of improvement that constitute the material form of the seed and its demarcation according to commercial and scientific logics, including but not limited to recent species of intellectual property rights and genetic modification. Through a discussion of natural science, deconstruction of naturalized categories of production and innovation, and critical genealogy of narratives of domestication and civilization, the cultural and temporal depth of seeds comes into focus, casting cultivation as a collaborative project with a 10,000-year history.

About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.
