About this Event
How will we secure the plant varieties needed for a more sustainable and resilient UK agriculture? Can the plant breeding community rise to the challenge, and what is needed to achieve this?
The agricultural sector is currently facing a series of complex challenges: sky-rocketing energy costs, devastating climate change effects, biodiversity loss and consumer dietary shifts to name a few. This event aims to bring together experts with a diverse range of agricultural philosophies to explore current plant breeding frameworks and future needs in agriculture, areas of synergy and ways to improve plant breeding to ensure we have the right plants to tackle the UK’s challenges.
Join plant breeding experts for a day of fruitful knowledge exchange and creativity. In addition to expert panels, delegates will have a space to discuss a series of topics- such as traits to support resilience, business models for the 21st Century, achieving tailored varieties with limited resources, and the role of populations vs varieties- in the afternoon break-out sessions.
We believe that by bringing practitioners, researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders together, we will be able to discuss and identify future breeding priorities and the changes required to ensure our breeding programmes meet the needs of the future market and challenges of the 21st Century.
EVENT PROGRAMME AND SPEAKERS
9:00 Registration
9:30 – 9:45 Welcome - Ruth Bastow (CHAP) and Jo Lewis (Soil Association)
9:45 – 10:15 Setting the scene: A tipping point for change. In this session, we explore the current agricultural landscape in the UK and the once-in-a-generation changes it is experiencing.
10:15 – 11:00 The role and potential of plant breeding. An invitation to look at current plant breeding practices and the process of securing a plant variety onto the Recommended List, and the limitations of this process.
10:15 – 10:30 Making ‘the grade’.
10:30 – 11:00 Panel perspectives.
11:00 – 11:30 Refreshment break
11:30 -12:30 Enabling plant breeding for the future . Chaired by Liz Bowles (Farm Carbon Toolkit) An opportunity to reimagine the UK plant breeding system and explore how should it look like to make it futureproof.
11:30 – 11:45 What could the future look like?
11:45 – 12:30 Panel perspectives .
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 -15:30 Stakeholder breakout rooms. Work with us to co-design this new future, particularly from a plant breeding perspective. Bring your ideas and share your perspectives on this challenge as we seek to build potential solutions.
15:30 – 16:00 Refreshment break
16:00 – 16:45 Feedback and action plan - Ruth Bastow and Jo Lewis Pulling the threads together, this final session shares themes from the breakout discussions and brings together the ideas from the day.
16:45 Close
Refreshments and lunch are included in the ticket price.
Data protection
Soil Association takes data protection very seriously and will only collect essential data from participants necessary to use for the running of this event; this information will also be shared with this event co-organisers CHAP Solutions, also limiting it to uses associated to the event.
The Soil Association's full privacy policy is available here: https://www.soilassociation.org/privacy-policy/
Chap Solution’s full privacy policy is available here: https://chap-solutions.co.uk/privacy-notice/
By booking onto this event you agree to the terms and conditions stated in our privacy policies.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Conference Aston, Aston Street, Birmingham, United Kingdom
GBP 30.00