URBANA, Ill. – The Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois will host a workshop on applied quantitative genetics for plant breeders June 1-3, 2022. The free workshop will give graduate students and other interested professionals the statistical tools to achieve greater crop breeding outcomes.

“This is a quantitative plant breeding workshop covering the applications of rigorous statistical approaches to make better breeding decisions,” says Alex Lipka, associate professor in the Department of Crop Sciences and co-leader of the workshop.

In its second year, the workshop will cover marker-assisted selection, genomic selection, genome-wide association studies, and more. Lipka will be joined by crop sciences professors Jessica Rutkoski and Juan Arbelaez in teaching the course.

“We’ll go over the basics, but we get a little more advanced and applied than what you might learn in a quantitative genetics class. We stay laser-focused on what you can do in the field during a growing season,” Lipka says.

Participants will walk away with the knowledge and tools to make more informed and accurate breeding decisions for any crop trait of interest.

“The workshop is a great add-on to classic university classes since it provides, in a short, intense training, the opportunity to combine theory and practice and learn how new tools are applied in real breeding programs around the globe,” says Stefanie Griebel, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Göttingen and participant in last year’s workshop.

Participants can attend virtually or in person. The workshop meets 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time June 1-3. Registration is open to anyone around the world.

For more information, contact Alex Lipka at 217-300-0726 or alipka@illinois.edu.

The Department of Crop Sciences is in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.