ACGG at APBC & NextGen Breeders Workshop

In June 2025, a large number of ACGG associates, including three students from JLU (Joshua Okoye, Phillipp Heilmann and Lars Thomsen), attended the Australiasian Plant Breeding Conference in Fremantle, Australia. The conference was preceded by a NextGen Breeders Workshop, held at the beautiful campus of University of Western Australia in Perth, which attracted around 100 early-career workshop participants from Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and – of course – Germany! The workshop participants enjoyed an informative and enjoyable day of networking activities with invited experts from academia and industry, ending with an insightful panel discussion about hop and barley breeding and their importance for the brewing industry, accompanied by a beer-tasting session with breeding/brewing products from Perth's Gage Roads Brewery. Hannah Robinson (HGU) and Rod Snowdon (JLU) participated as panel members for a discussion on career pathways in plant breeding.

The 3-day APBC conference was attended by around 250 delegates from academia and the plant breeding industry, including a large continbgent of ACGG students and associates from UQ, JLU and JKI: Multiple parallel sessions and keynote presentations covered all aspects of modern plant breeding and crop genetics, and the closing keynote presentation on "Accelerating Crop Genetic Gain – Yesterday, today and tomorrow" was given by ACGG lead Rod Snowdon. The ACGG stand in the exhibition area, taken care of by Jules together with participating ACGG students, was busy all week taking entries for two competitions: Naming a new Macadamia hybrid and guessing the number of mung beans in a jar. Congratulations to conference chairperson Jacqui Batley, a member of our ACGG International Advisory Board, for the excellent organisation – a great time qwas had by all!