German Plant Breeding Conference 2026
This year, the IRTG was once again highly visible at the GPZ conference in Halle. The event began with a Young GPZ Early Career Researcher Workshop, where participants had the opportunity to engage directly with Wiebke Sannemann (KWS), Thorsten Schnurbusch (IPK), and Thomas Bergman (UWA) to learn about career opportunities beyond the PhD. Following this inspiring workshop, the three-day conference on the theme "Plant Breeding under Climate Change" provided a broad overview of the challenges facing the field. The IRTG was well represented through multiple talks from Gießen, as well as from our partners at Hochschule Geisenheim University, the Julius Kühn Institute, and the University of Queensland. In addition, 27 posters from our institutes brought considerable scientific knowledge to the conference.
Further, we are delighted to announce that Agnieszka Golicz has been awarded the Wricke Prize for outstanding scientific achievement. Warmest congratulations on this well-deserved honour!
This strong presence was well recognised: Zsa Zsa Boyny was awarded 2nd place in the poster competition for her poster "The Effect of Increased Recombination on Breeding Progress with Additive × Additive Epistasis", and Paolo Callipo received the prize for the best talk for his presentation "Scaling Long-Read Sequencing to Plant Populations: A Single-Assay Approach for Genomic and Epigenomic Diversity in a Clonal System". Congratulations to both of you! We look forward to the next GPZ conference, where the IRTG will aim to claim the best poster prize for the third time in a row. So, IRTG PhD students, start preparing your best posters, as we have a title to defend.
Image Source: GPZ (Gesellschaft für Pflanzenzüchtung e.V.); Andreas Maurer
