Dear Plant Breeding Community,

The Plant Breeding Club at NC State would like to extend an invitation for you and your team to attend our 8th Biennial Plant Breeding Symposium. We are excited to host five speakers from diverse backgrounds in plant breeding, and they are eager to engage with the NC State community and beyond! 

The title of our symposium is “Building Better Plants.” We have made every effort to include academic, industry, nonprofit, and local speakers representing an array of species.

This event will be hosted at the Talley Student Union, in the Piedmont/Mountains Ballroom (second floor) of North Carolina State University’s campus in Raleigh, North Carolina. The date is set for Thursday, February 12, 2026, from 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. This event attracts up to 300 attendees, including industry representatives, university faculty and administrators, graduate students, undergraduate students, technical staff, and postdoctoral researchers. For those joining remotely, please use the online ZOOM registration to receive the link.

Regards,

Matthew Willman
President, Plant Breeding Club at NC State
PhD Student, Department of Crop & Soil Sciences
North Carolina State University

Poster Competition

The Plant Breeding Symposium will feature a research poster competition at 12:45 PM in the Talley Student Union. Cash prizes will be awarded for both first and second place. Voting will be conducted through a crowdsourcing method. If you have any questions, please reach out to Cole Hammet at chhammet@ncsu.edu.

Speakers

• Dr. Tim Kelliher: NC State University; Genome Editing Center for Sustainable Agriculture; gene editing in plant breeding
• Sara Fern Fitzsimmons: Penn State University; Technologies for Agriculture and Living Systems (TALiS) Coordinator, conservation of the American chestnut
• Dr. Margaret Worthington: University of Arkansas; Fruit breeding
• Dr. Uri Krieger: Syngenta; R&D vegetables and flowers
• Dr. Mariano Alvarez: Avalo AI; AI applications to plant breeding

Sponsors

Schedule

Thursday, February 12, 2026, at Talley Student Union

8:30	Registration open
9:00	Welcome from the Dean of CALS
9:15	Timothy Kelliher, NC State University	Precision Breeding for Commercial Impact: NC State and Beyond
10:00	Sara Fern Fitzsimmons, Penn State University	Counting Chestnuts Before They Ripen: from Lab Hype to the Valley of Death
10:45	Social Break
11:00	Uri Krieger, Syngenta	Speed & Scale – Innovation in Vegetables Breeding
11:45	Lunch
12:45	Poster Session
1:45	Margaret Worthington, University of Arkansas	Inheritance, Innovation, and Relevance: Lessons from a Public Fruit Breeding Program
2:30	Mariano Alvarez, Avalo AI	Accelerating Crop Evolution Through the Integration of Genomics, Phenomics, and Machine Learning
3:15	Social Break
3:30	Panel Discussion	Breeding Better Plants Together: Team Science in Industry
4:15	Closing Remarks & Poster Awards
5:00	Symposium closed

Panel Discussion

Dr. Marianela Rodriguez	Global R&D Lead, Soybeans	BASF
Dr. Don Jones	Director, Agricultural Research	Cotton Incorporated
Dr. Uri Krieger	Head of R&D, Vegetables and Flowers	Syngenta
Dr. Mariano Alvarez	Co-founder / Chief Science Officer	Avalo AI

The livestream is being provided by Burk and Associates, Inc.

Past Symposiums:

The resources below provide symposium details, including the schedule, presenters, access to their online presentations, and sponsors.

• 2024, February 1–2: “Breeding for Balance: Plant and Human Well-being”
• 2022, February 10: “Sixth Biennial Plant Breeding Symposium“
• 2020, February 6: “Fifth Biennial Plant Breeding Symposium”
  • Closing the gap between genes and gender in plant breeding – Hale Ann Tufan, Ph.D., Cornell University
  • Interrogating and manipulating the potato genome – Robin Buell, Ph.D., Michigan State University
  • Design of breeding programs using genomics – Jack Dekkers, Ph.D., Iowa State University
  • Creating a cover crop breeding network – Chris Reberg-Horton, Ph.D., North Carolina State University

• 2018, February 8: “Next Generation Plant Breeder’s Toolbox“
• 2016, February 4: “Looking to the Future: Integrating Insights and Innovations in Plant Breeding“
• 2014, February 6: “21st Century Biodiversity in Plant Breeding“
• 2012, January 27: “Perspectives on Global Plant Breeding“