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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: Peter Reich
2025-04-17 11:00 - 12:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | https://uqz.zoom.us/j/84296813859
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 Peter Reich.
From plant traits to biodiversity-ecosystem function to climate mitigation and justice: A journey across scales, disciplines, and domains
Understanding and stewarding nature is our collective challenge.
Will ecosystems maintain their biodiversity and function under global environmental change, and continue to sequester carbon and slow climate change? Can traits (means and diversity) simplify the complexity of ecology enough that we can make predictable sense of it? To help address these issues I engage in studies at scales from leaf to globe and on topics from ecophysiology to community assembly to biogeochemistry. This work ranges from identification of global trait-tradeoff and metabolic response functions; to ecosystem-scale experiments with factors such as CO2, temperature, rainfall, fire and biodiversity; to cross-continental observations and earth system modeling of global biogeochemical cycles. Using examples from diverse ecosystems I will show how framing research around fundamental hypotheses about complex issues, and how they scale across hierarchies, space and time, can help uncover both predictable general patterns and unexpected surprises.
Such understanding is also useful to how we might approach natural climate solutions, which need to consider not just carbon sequestration but impacts of, and impacts on, biodiversity and justice too. And finally, we ecologists need to better link our domains (e.g. natural climate solutions) with other pathways to decarbonization. If we combine increased acquisition and storage of carbon on land with just decarbonization via increased energy efficiency, reliance on renewable energy, and electrification, we can slow and stop climate change (and save a boatload of money) by mid-century.
Justly and too late, yet just in time.

Professor Peter Reich
Peter B. Reich is Director of the Institute for Global Change Biology at the University of Michigan, and has long-standing affiliations with the Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota and the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University. Reich helped pioneer the development and up-scaling of trait-based ecology and is a world leader in running state-of-the-art ecosystem-scale climate change and biodiversity experiments. He also helped launch the science education channel, MinuteEarth, now with >750 million views on various platforms. Reich is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Laureate in Ecology and Conservation Biology. He is an avid but extremely mediocre cross-country skier and piano player, and also regularly engages (with a bit less frustration) in pick-up basketball and bread baking. He worries incessantly about the state of people and nature on our planet, yet despite so much evidence of our collective failures, is an optimist about our shared future.

Plant Success Research Retreat 2025
2025-06-23 - 2025-06-27
The fifth annual Plant Success Research Retreat will occur in the week beginning 23 June 2025. The retreat is open to all Centre Members to attend in person and virtual attendance will also be available.
More details to come

Experiences of scientists supporting community engagement regarding crop genetic resources and the law: examples from traditionally based maize systems in North America
2025-09-30 09:30 - 10:30 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Daniela Soleri, Alma Piñeyro, and Emmanuel Carlos González Ortega.
In situ conserved crop genetic resources (CGRs) occur in the form of native or local crop varieties, developed and cultivated by peasant/farming communities, including indigenous communities across North America. The global significance of these CGRs has led to the construction of legal frameworks regarding core issues of access, use, benefit sharing, liability and redress, and the threats to the integrity and conservation of these crop varieties and the associated ancestral knowledge. Until recently, most of these frameworks have supported an industrial agriculture and food system paradigm and associated assumptions. As social and biological scientists, we describe our methods and experiences from work with indigenous maize-growing communities around some of those core issues. Regarding the exploitation of community CGRs – early documentation of community opinions regarding Intellectual Property Rights in seeds, food and tribal name, and a recent example of the inadequacy of current protocols intended to prevent inequitable exploitation and eventual privatization of community CGRs. Regarding protecting the integrity of community CGRs, we summarize previous and ongoing work to uphold a constitutional mandate in Mexico to protect community CGRs of native maize from gene technology contamination, through a grassroots and bottom-up collaborative approach with peasants and small-scale maize producers that we have called “community biosafety.” We do not speak for these communities, but rather as scientists and partners testing conventional assumptions about agriculture and food systems, and alternatives to these. From our standpoints, we reflect on lessons learned of utility for current and future research and practice around the interface of the legal, western scientific, and community perspectives on native and local crop varieties.

Biographies
Daniela Soleri
Daniela Soleri has a PhD in ethnoecology with an emphasis in anthropology and participatory research, and a minor in plant science. She is a Research Scientist, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. As an ethnoecologist Soleri’s research uses theory and methods from social and biological sciences to explore epistemic justice in food systems. With these tools she documents and investigates people’s knowledge and management of their crop plants and foods, and the implications for improving science practice and public policy. Together with colleagues she has described the informal, adaptive processes and practices developed by small scale farmers to support desirable, viable maize and bean populations, or by transnational migrants to maintain healthy, culturally significant food systems in new places of residence. She tests assumptions that are fundamental in some food system research such as the function of seed selection, definitions of a crop variety, farmers’ attitudes towards new seed technologies and their related risk assessment, and the homogeneity of the nutrition transition in migrant communities. Her studies of the perceptions and goals of maize farmers viz a vis maize seed technologies – local varieties, and commercial hybrids and transgenics – are unique in distinguishing these technologies and documenting farmers’ own preferences, providing evidence of a more nuanced picture of the larger seed technology debate than is typically seen. In different ways, her research asks: Through respectful collaboration, how can researchers understand and support communities’ own efforts to construct food systems that reflect valued livelihoods, foods and cultural traditions while adapting to 21st century challenges including agrobiodiversity loss, rising social inequity, noncommunicable diseases, migration, and the climate crisis? More here.
Alma Piñeyro
Alma Piñeyro-Nelson is a biologist from the Faculty of Sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM; National Autonomous University of Mexico), México (2007) and holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences, also at UNAM (2013). Her professional training includes a postdoctoral stance at the University of California at Berkeley, USA, where she was a UC-Mexus postdoctoral fellow (February 2013-April 2015). Since June 2015, she has been a Full professor at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM; Metropolitan Autonomous University) at its Xochimilco campus, where she works in the Department of Agricultural and Animal Production, teaching undergraduates in the agronomy major. Her areas of expertise are: molecular genetics of plant development, developmental evolution, agrobiodiversity conservation, as well as biosafety and biomonitoring of genetically modified organisms in Mexico, particularly maize. She has published several research articles related to her research areas and coordinated, together with Dr. Elena R. Álvarez-Buylla the multi-authored book: “El maíz en peligro ante los transgénicos: un análisis integral sobre el caso de México” (Ed.CEIICH-UNAM/UCCS, 2013). Piñeyro has worked with small-holder producers and peasants from different parts of Mexico (Oaxaca, Tlaxcala, Mexico City, Chiapas, Tabasco) throughout her career. Since 2022 she has been PI (Principal Investigator) or co-PI in three research projects funded by the National Council for Science and Technology (Mexico) focused on documenting transgene presence in different maize samples (native seed, hybrid seed, grain, processed flour, food) and has led multidisciplinary efforts focused on the co-construction of communitary biosafety measures in localities in Oaxaca and Tabasco.
Emmanuel Carlos González Ortega
Dr. Emmanuel González-Ortega currently is a researcher with/for Mexico (“Investigador por México”) at the Autonomous Metropolitan University-Xochimilco in Mexico City. He holds a PhD in Biotechnology from the University of Barcelona, a MsSC in Plant Biotechnology from the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav) in Mexico, and has Biotechnology Engineering degree from the Interdisciplinary Professional Unit of Biotechnology of the National Polytechnic Institute (UPIBI-IPN) in Mexico. González-Ortega is an expert in biosecurity of genetically modified organisms (GMO), GMO risk assessment, monitoring and identification of transgenic maize in the field and in foods produced with maize. He has participated in research projects aimed to the construction of bottom-up initiatives on maize biosecurity in indigenous/rural communities in several regions of Mexico. González-Ortega has been nominated by Mexican government to participate in several multilateral discussions in the context of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity such as “Risk assessment and risk management of GMO” and “Monitoring and Identification of GMO” discussions on the Development of the methodology for the second assessment and review of the effectiveness of the Nagoya Protocol. He has been recognized as expert in Synthetic Biology to participate in the Ad hoc Technical Expert Group on Synthetic Biology. He is interested in the biological, ecological, social, and cultural implications of the presence of GMOs. González-Ortega also has scientific expertise in molecular biology, molecular genetics, molecular virology. He is a member of the National System of Researchers, Level I, of the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation (SECIHTI) in Mexico.
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: Junko Kyozuka
2025-10-07 14:00 - 15:00 (Australia/Melbourne)
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 Distinguished Professor Junko Kyozuka.
Step by step evolution of strigolactone signalling pathway
Strigolactones (SLs) serve dual functions as hormones that regulate growth and development and as rhizosphere signalling molecules that promote symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in flowering plants. How SLs acquired these dual roles remained unclear. We reported that the ancestral function of SLs was as rhizosphere signals, which were later co-opted as hormones through the gradual evolution of signalling components. SLs are perceived by DWARF14 (D14), which interacts with the F-box protein MAX2 and SMXL repressors; D14 arose via duplication of KARRIKIN INSENSITIVE2 (KAI2), a receptor for the unidentified ligand KL, in the common ancestor of seed plants. KAI2 itself likely originated via horizontal gene transfer prior to streptophyte evolution. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that KL signaling was established in the common ancestor of land plants.
To investigate the ancestral role of KL signaling, we analyzed its function in two bryophytes, the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha and the moss Physcomitrium patens. In both species, KL signaling modulates growth by regulating cytokinin accumulation. We propose that the functions of KL signalling in bryophytes may reflect its original role in optimizing growth and development.

Distinguished Professor Junko Kyozuka
Tohoku University

Re-imagining (Re)production in Intellectual Property Law: Proprietary Fruit and the Making of Botanical Kinds
2025-10-28 17:00 - 18:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Susannah Chapman.
Over the past several decades, many fruit breeding programs have begun to commercialize new varieties via the strategic use to two legal techniques: the use of plant variety protection—coupled with contracts to create small “clubs” of select growers—and the use of branding to foster ready consumer demand for the protected fruit that the club would produce. In these highly proprietary supply chains, the production of new varieties is inextricably tied to the seasonal production of brand-compliant fruit.
This talk explores the work that is required to make an already-existing variety grow into to its varietal image year after year. In doing so, it invites reflection on the distinction between creative production and mundane reproduction that permeate many accounts of plant breeding by exploring the work of “making” that comes after the “creation” of new botanical kinds. Implied in the internal infrastructure through which intellectual property law identifies its object is the idea that crop varieties are produced (bred or “created”), after which they are classified and named. Once bred and authored into the world, the variety is effectively reproduced (cultivated), unless and until it is “bred” into something different. Such a distinction maps onto wider genealogical models of reproduction-as-generation. Cultivation here is generally not envisaged as a creative act, but a reproductive—or copying—one. Rather, it is only in certain instances of plant reproduction, where there is a biological shift in the progeny that is deemed sufficient to create a break in botanical kind, that the copying reproduction of cultivation is reclassified as a creative, productive act of breeding.
In following the creative work of growing brand-compliant crop varieties, this talk shows how emerging intellectual property arrangements are reworking, in some ways, the very distinctions between reproduction and production upon which they depend. Such re-imagining opens up space to consider, however narrowly, the ways in which plant reproduction—and reproduction more broadly—is always enmeshed in wider social, ecological, and technoscientific relations.

Biography
Susannah Chapman
Susannah Chapman is a Lecturer in Sociocultural Anthropology at University College Cork. Trained as an environmental and legal anthropologist, she has a keen interest in plant-human relations, food systems, and environmental governance. Her work asks questions about the signification and care of plants but also the coloniality, biopolitics, and translational practices of contemporary efforts to regulate, conserve, and transform plant life, including trees. Her interest in these questions is rooted in her prior experience working on many different kinds of farms, from diverse polycultures to simplified monocultures, across the United States and a general love of plants. She has written on the loss and recuperation of apple tree diversity in the United States, the propertization of horticultural supply chains in Australia, and the regulation of plant life in The Gambia since the late nineteenth century.
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.

Making and Marketing Biocultural Heritage in Agriculture: From the Andean Community to Asia
2025-11-18 05:00 - 06:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Rosemary Coombe and David Jefferson.
Much socio-legal research on intellectual property in relation to food and agriculture focuses on the influence of global policy norms on domestic law-making and the expansion of new international trade opportunities for small-scale producers. Other studies have examined controversies and contestations around government actors claiming foods as manifestations of their national heritage. We depart from both mainstream analytical approaches, employing perspectives from legal anthropology on how ‘policy travels’ to consider new articulations of human rights and sustainability objectives. We evaluate and synthesise a growing body of ethnographic research (much of it done by and with international NGOs) that explores how Indigenous, ethnic minority, and other communities living in rural areas in the Global South articulate proprietary claims over seeds, crops, agricultural methods, and culinary knowledge as important forms of biocultural heritage in socioecological initiatives. These novel proprietary claims, exist inside, outside, and often alongside conventional intellectual property vehicles. Influenced by environmental development NGOs, farmers’ movements, and food sovereignty aspirations, communities assert biocultural rights norms to identify goods derived from collective territorial enterprise. Drawing from earlier research focused on Andean Community member states, we now consider examples from China, the Philippines, and Nepal of how biocultural heritage territories are designated, agroecology principles are asserted, biocultural goods are made and marketed, and agritourism initiatives promoted. Together, these examples demonstrate interlinkages between Andean and Asian communities as global policy norms of biodiversity conservation, traditional knowledge protection, climate change mitigation, and food security and sovereignty are interpreted through articulations of collective rights to heritage.

Biographies
Rosemary Coombe
Rosemary J. Coombe is a Full Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Social Science. She held the Tier One Canada Research Chair in Law, Communication and Culture at York University from 2001- 2022. She supervises graduate students in Anthropology and Socio-Legal Studies. Prior to becoming a CRC at York, she was a Full Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She holds doctoral degrees in law and anthropology and publishes widely in anthropology, cultural studies, law and society and food and heritage studies.
Her early work addressed the cultural, political, and social implications of intellectual property laws. Her book, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties (1998, reprinted in 2008) is a legal ethnography of the ways in which intellectual property law shapes cultural politics in consumer societies. She now does research on ‘the work of culture’ in an era of informational capital. Topics include the protection of biological diversity and its relation to cultural diversity, and the emergence of ‘biocultural heritage’ protections. Generally, she explores the ‘culturalisation’ of claims, entitlements, and social justice aspirations under conditions of neoliberalism, sustainable development objectives, and evolving and emerging fields of human rights, particularly Peasants’ Rights.
David Jefferson
Dr David J Jefferson (he/him) is an Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury Faculty of Law, where he teaches Environmental Law, Land Law, and Intellectual Property. David is a legal anthropologist whose research covers a range of issues related to biodiversity conservation, biotechnology regulation, intellectual property in the agricultural and food sectors, ecosystem rights laws, and the protection of Indigenous knowledge systems. The field sites where David works are in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and the Andean Community of South America. He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Queensland, a JD from the University of California, Davis, and an MA in Psychology from Suffolk University. David has been the recipient of several competitive research awards, including a United States Fulbright fellowship for work in Ecuador. His first book, Towards an Ecological Intellectual Property: Reconfiguring Relationships Between People and Plants in Ecuador was published in 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.
This People, Plants and the Law lecture is brought to you in collaboration with The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP).

Talking Plant Science: Lizzie Wandrag
2025-12-02 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne)
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 Lizzie Wandrag.
Species interactions as drivers of plant community dynamics under global change
Species interactions, including mutualisms, competition and plant-soil feedbacks, govern patterns of coexistence, community assembly, and ecosystem resilience. Yet these interactions are often the first components of ecosystems to be disrupted under global change. I will explore how species interactions shape plant performance and community composition, drawing on empirical examples from both native and invaded systems. I will highlight how species interactions mediate invasion success and impact, and how altered disturbance regimes amplify or suppress these processes. Together, these perspectives underscore the central role of species interactions in shaping plant community dynamics in a rapidly changing world, and highlight the need to integrate species interactions into community ecology to improve predictions of community change.

Dr Lizzie Wandrag
University of Tasmania
Lizzie a plant community ecologist with a focus on examining how biotic interactions affect and are affected by plant species’ and community response to global change. She is increasingly interested in the role of the soil microbiome in driving plant community composition and recovery from perturbation,
Lizzie often works with weedy and invasive plant species. Examining the factors that allows some plant species to dominate in some locations provides opportunities to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes that govern plant community composition more generally.

Honoring the Gift: A Share-Alike Approach to Free Access to Seeds and Collaborative Futures
2026-02-18 09:00 - 10:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Claudia Irene Calderón, Jean-Michel Ané and Jorge L. Contreras.
Seeds represent more than just genetic material. They are gifts that embody community stories, cultural memory, and ecological adaptation, serving as the foundation of our food systems. This talk will delve into how we can honor these gifts through ethical frameworks and collaborative practices that safeguard free access and reciprocity. We will begin by sharing lessons from the MaSE project, which promotes mutual learning between Indigenous communities and academic institutions to develop culturally grounded guidelines for seed sovereignty collaboratively. Next, we will explore the scientific and ethical dimensions surrounding research on nitrogen-fixing maize landraces from Oaxaca. This case exemplifies both the promise of agroecological innovation and the risks of biopiracy when Indigenous contributions are overlooked. Lastly, we will examine legal approaches to open seed germplasm transfers, such as Bioleft (in Argentina) or the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI), which seek to challenge restrictive intellectual property regimes and foster commons-based stewardship. Together, these perspectives encourage us to envision collaborative futures where diverse forms of knowledge, cultural commitments, scientific advancements, and legal frameworks converge to safeguard biodiversity and promote ethical sharing.

Biographies
Professor Jean-Michel Ané is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in both the Department of Bacteriology and the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His primary research focuses on elucidating the molecular mechanisms that drive efficient symbiotic relationships between plants and microbes. The ultimate aim of his work is to leverage this understanding to improve agricultural productivity and sustainability for the production of food, feed, and biofuels.

Professor Jorge Contreras is a Distinguished University Professor, the James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law and Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law and the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. His research focuses on intellectual property and innovation law, and he has written extensively on patent pledges and other forms of open innovation in the life sciences.

Dr Calderón is an Affiliated Professor at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and a Teaching Faculty in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work uses participatory and transdisciplinary approaches to advance just agroecological transitions. With extensive experience at the intersections of gender, indigeneity, health, and agroecology, she is committed to re-centering ancestral knowledge and fostering respectful collaborations that value different ways of knowing. Through initiatives such as MaSE “Maize Sovereignty for Everyone, Mutual Learning for the Defense and Culturally Acceptable Use of Indigenous Biodiversity”, she promotes mutual learning between Indigenous communities and academic institutions to co-create ethical frameworks for seed sovereignty that safeguard biodiversity and strengthen sustainable food systems.

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: Frank Sainsbury
2026-03-03 10:00 - 11:00 (Australia/Melbourne)
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 Frank Sainsbury.
Reprogramming Viruses to Protect Plants from the Inside and Out
Viruses are deceptively simple and remarkably potent. They infect all forms of cellular life and while viruses are known for disease, they exist as partners in different types of symbiotic relationships with their hosts, ranging from parasitic to mutualistic. Thanks to modern biotechnology they have also been harnessed for bespoke benefits in medicine and agriculture. My research group uses recombinant virus-like particle expression to understand the structure-function relationship of virus capsids and to rebuild viruses as containers for proteins and non-native nucleic acids. Using these approaches, we are exploiting some of the unique properties of viruses to devise ways to prevent the spread of plant pests and pathogens, including nematodes and disease-causing viruses. The environmental stability of bacteriophage capsids makes for long-lived carriers of RNA-based pesticides to soil. The ability of persistent plant viruses to exist relatively unchanged for millennia inside their hosts provides an opportunity to bestow crop resistance to herbivores and parasitic plant viruses via enduring extrachromosomal transcription in plants. Both projects support our goal to use reconstructed and reprogrammed virus-like particles as delivery vehicles in challenging environments where stability and/or transfer of sensitive cargos are current bottlenecks.

Dr Frank Sainsbury
Griffith University
Dr Frank Sainsbury leads a physical virology lab at Griffith University. His research group is primarily interested in virus capsids, pushing the boundaries of how they assemble, and what can be learned from using them as biochemical reaction vessels and delivery vehicles. Dr Sainsbury trained as a plant virologist at the John Innes Centre in the UK and was hooked by the deceptive simplicity of viruses and by their potential for use in biotechnology. His PhD work included the invention of protein expression systems in plants that have supported Phase III clinical trials of influenza vaccines and led to a major UK innovation award. Since taking up an ARC DECRA at the University of Queensland in 2014, he has developed a program of research into the assembly, engineering, and uses of virus-like particles. In 2018 he was awarded a CSIRO Fellowship in Synthetic Biology to explore the directed assembly of virus coat proteins into protein cages with non-natural geometries. He subsequently moved to Griffith University and in 2023, he was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship to evolve virus capsids for applied uses in agriculture and health.

Do Sacred Plants Have Standing? Religious Freedom of Expression & Biocultural Recovery of Sacred & Ceremonial Plants
2026-03-11 09:30 - 10:30 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Gary Nabhan.
Indigenous communities and other traditional ethnic enclaves have long integrated sacred and ceremonial plants into their spiritual traditions, but the affirmation of their legal rights to protect and maintain cultural access to such plants has been fraught with outdated conceptions of what “religion” and “legitimate practice of spiritual traditions” entails, especially with respect to plants and animals used in ceremonies and their legal status as “sacred persons”. Case studies from the contested U.S.-Mexico border and war-torn Middle East will suggest some ways that public perception and case law are evolving to accommodate these Indigenous rights more fully.

Biography
Gary Nabhan PhD is a contemplative desert ecologist and Franciscan Brother. He founded the Sacred Plants Biocultural Recovery Initiative and worked with indigenous spiritual leaders and elected officials to declare the saguaro cactus as a sacred sentient being with legal protection on 100,000 ha of Sonoran Desert lands. He is author, Coauthor or editor of 35 books in 6 languages and over 150 scholarly articles and book chapters.

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.

Bad to Think With: Plants and Property Relations
2026-04-28 16:00 - 17:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Veit Braun.
Animals, Claude Lévi-Strauss famously said, are not just good to eat but good to think with: they elucidate the structure of social relations. But what about plants? In this talk I argue that the ways we relate to plants on the one hand and the matrix of people and things on the other offered by property thought are a bad match. Much of what plants are and do does not neatly fit into the categories of subject and object or body and idea; nor can the problems caused by intellectual and tangible property in plants easily be addressed by the critique of property. To elaborate this point, I want to sketch the trajectories on which plants go astray and slip through our matrices of property (including my own) by exploring some of what has happened in the legal landscape of especially European plant breeding over the last 20 or so years. Whether we should run after plants and leave property behind or, conversely, try to patch up the structure of property relations depends on what we care about more: saving plants or saving property.

Biography
Veit Braun is a sociologist and Research Associate at the University of Augsburg, Germany. His work is situated at the intersection of law, economics and biology. Veit has studied the contemporary crises of property in plant breeding and the organisational and temporal logics of animal biobanks. He is currently leading the research project ‘More and Less’ on the mutable identity of nitrogen in society. His book At the End of Property: Patents, Plants and the Crisis of Propertization was published by Bristol University Press in 2024.

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.

Plant Success Research Retreat 2026
2026-06-22 - 2026-06-26
The sixth annual Plant Success Research Retreat will occur in the week beginning 22 June 2026. The retreat is open to all Centre Members to attend in person and virtual attendance will also be available.
More details to come.

Winter School in AI and Predictive Agriculture
2026-07-13 08:00 - 2026-07-15 17:00 (Australia/Melbourne)
The Winter School in AI and Predictive Agriculture is a free event to share the collective learnings of experts from The University of Queensland in the use of AI and predictive analytics in Agriculture and Sustainability. The event will be held on 13-15 July 2026 at The University of Queensland St Lucia Campus, Brisbane and will feature seminars, case studies and hands-on workshops.
The Winter School aims to:

Build capacity in applied AI for agriculture, especially amongst PhD students, EMCRs and industry participants;
Provide participants with practical skills, not just knowledge;
Demonstrate AI as an enabler to make standard agricultural technologies more accessible.

We are currently seeking registrations for this event, please complete the form here if you would like to participate >
Monday 13 July: AI Toolkit and Foundations
All day: Lecture, online or in person. Morning tea and lunch will be provided for in person attendees.
Attendees will learn the foundations of AI in an accessible way to support the applied case studies and hands‑on workshops in the following days. Topics will include:

Intro to Neural Networks
AI Models and Embeddings
Transformers and LLMs
Agentic AI
AI tools deployment

Tuesday 14 July: Phenotyping
AM: Lecture, online or in person. Morning tea will be provided for in person attendees.
Attendees will explore how the AI Toolkit can be applied to advanced predictive phenotyping through expert seminars and real-world case studies. Topics will include:

Sensors and point clouds
Machine learning for phenotyping
Foundation models for crops
High throughput platforms and 3D digital twins
UAV image data processing

PM: Hands-on workshop, in person only (spaces limited). Lunch will be provided.
Participants will apply the methods introduced on real-world problems.

Wednesday 15 July: Genomic prediction
AM: Lecture, online or in person. Morning tea will be provided for in person attendees.
Attendees will learn how AI methods can be leveraged for genomic prediction via expert seminars and applied case studies. Topics will include:

Fundamentals of Genotype-to-Phenotype models
Ensemble models
Graph Neural Networks applied to genomic prediction
Marker selection using biological priors and networks
Agentic coding to build a genomic prediction pipeline

PM: Hands-on workshop, in person only (spaces limited). Lunch will be provided.
Participants will apply the methods introduced on real-world problems.
Spaces for hands-on workshops are strictly limited.

Scientific and Technical Committee
David Kainer
Senior Research Fellow, The University of Queensland, ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success
Genomic prediction and graphs.

Alex Wu
Senior Research Fellow, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Field-level design/prediction, optimisation and machine learning with crop models to explore G×E×M interactions and design optimal crop ideotypes.
Liqi Han
Research Fellow, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Crop Digital Twins, High Performance Computing, Artificial Intelligence, High Throughput Phenotyping.

Brodie Lawson
Postdoctoral Researcher, Queensland University of Technology, ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success
Crop growth modelling across scales, including plant signalling, cell-growth and physiology. Gaussian process regression as a surrogate to true modelling to create fast models for crop simulators.

Christos Mitsanis
PhD Student, The University of Queensland, ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success
Agentic AI, mechanistic networks and CGMs.

Sophie (Qiaomin) Chen
Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
Multi-scale precision agriculture. Integrates crop modelling with machine learning. modelling of crop traits using simulation-generated data sets.

Sebastian Lopez-Marcano
Senior Manager Analytics, The University of Queensland
Data analytics, workflows.

Javier Fernandez
Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
Crop and agronomic modelling.

Eric Dinglasan
Senior Research Fellow, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Optimisation strategies for QTL stacking models. Adapts methods proven in animal breeding to crops.

Genotype by Environment by Management (GxExM) Symposium IV
2026-11-05 - 2026-11-06
Event information
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success is coordinating the next Genotype by Environment by Management (GxExM) symposium in November 2026 in Brisbane, Queensland. The symposium will focus on a range of topics related to the study of 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.
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 plantsuccess@uq.edu.au.
Expressions of interest have closed. The event will be held on Thursday 5 and Friday 6 November 2026 in Australia, more information and registration instructions will be circulated soon.
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.
