Introduction course leader and module leaders Plant Breeding 2016 2018
Plant breeding course 2016-2018 The plant breeding course is led by Prof. Richard Visser. He is leading instructor in plant breeding at Wageningen University and head of Wageningen UR Plant Breeding. All module leader are staff members of Wageningen UR Plant Breeding Contact details WUR Plant Breeding Wageningen UR Plant Breeding PO Box 386, 6700 AJ Wageningen, The Netherlands Visiting address: Droevendaalsesteeg 1, building 107, room 1.199 Website: http://www.plantbreeding.wur.nl/ Course leader Plant breeding course 2016-2018 Richard Visser studied Biology at the State University in Groningen. After obtaining his PhD degree in Plant Genetics he came to Wageningen University. At present he is professor and head of Wageningen UR Plant Breeding. He has 30 years of experience as researcher and has published over 400 publications. His current research interests are centred around genetics and genomics of crop plants with an emphasis on Solaneaceaous crops. He is also involved in many different projects aimed at combining varying databases and ~omics datasets to better predict breeding outcomes in crop plants. Next to being a member of the Academic Board of Wageningen University he is also a Board member of the TKI board T & U and the foundation VLPB. He further more is active in different national (Vice-chairman and member of the Dutch Organisation for Plant Breeders Rights; VeenhuizenTulp Fonds; Broekema Fonds) and international organisations (EAPR, EUCARPIA, Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy (IFAL) at the UC Davis World Food Center) with focus on breeding and/or food safety issue. Prof. RGF (Richard) Visser Chair & head Wageningen UR Plant Breeding
Module leader Module 1 Plant breeding and selection: basic principles and simple traits Rients Niks studied Plant Breeding at Wageningen University, and obtained his PhD degree in 1983 on partial resistance of barley to barley leaf rust. Since 1984 he works as staff member at the Laboratory of Plant Breeding. He runs a research programme on quantitative and nonhost resistance, and acts as lecturer in various courses at Wageningen University as well as in many tailor made courses abroad. Rients has produced a lot of teaching material, including a text book on the breeding for resistance to pathogens and pests and e-modules for distance learning. Dr RE (Rients) Niks Assistant Professor Plant Breeding
Module leaders Module 2 Molecular markers, linkage analysis, QTL analysis and marker-assisted breeding Sjaak van Heusden studied biology in Wageningen and obtained his PhD at the University of Amsterdam. From 1989 on he specialized in topics related to molecular markers especially in plant breeding. He is researcher since 1991 at Plant Research International, Wageningen and has been mainly involved in mapping studies in tomato research but has also experience in many crops such as onion, garlic, potato, apple, rose and lily. Since 2002 he also works for Wageningen University, department of Plant Breeding. There he also teaches in several breeding related subjects. The research has been focusing on biotic (a number of different pathogens like bacteria and fungi) and abiotic (salt and cold tolerance, parthenocarpic fruit set) stress in tomato. A total of 14 PhD students have been or are under his supervision and he has been coordinator of large research programs. The INDOSOL project (Solanaceae in Indonesia) with 5 PhD projects is an example of this. He was the daily coordinator of this program. He was also involved in co-operations with other countries like Malaysia, Ghana, India and Ecuador. Sjaak was author or co-author of over 60 peer reviewed scientific papers. Sjaak has organized and given many courses in different countries (Ecuador, Kenya, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Spain and France and also gives regularly in-house courses for breeding companies in the Netherlands. From 1 January 2014 on Sjaak van Heusden is partly employed by a private company (Solynta BV), the aim of this company is to introduce F1 hybrid potato seeds on the global market. Dr AW (Sjaak) van Heusden Staff scientist
Module leader Module 3 Quantitative aspects of plant breeding Chris Maliepaard joined Plant Breeding of Wageningen University in 2007 as research group leader Quantitative Aspects of Plant Breeding and assistant professor. He carries out research projects about mapping, QTL analysis and marker-assisted selection, for example in polyploid crops; about prediction of phenotypic traits from genomics data sets and generally has expertise on plant breeding, quantitative genetics, statistics and quantitative analysis aspects of systems biology and bioinformatics. He teaches about these topics in several MSc courses, PhD courses and other (international) courses as well. Before joining Plant Breeding, Chris was employed at Biometris as a research scientist, working on statistical analysis of large data sets, usually in the context of breeding/genetics/molecular biology, and he did consultancy of breeding companies on statistical and quantitative genetics topics. Chris Maliepaard is also module leader for Module 2, together with Sjaak van Heusden. Dr CA (Chris) Maliepaard. Research Group Leader Quantitative aspects of Plant Breeding ; Assistant Professor
Module leader Module 4 Breeding for Resistance and Quality Luisa Trindade was born in Portugal, where she obtained her two MSc degrees, one in Agriculture Engineering, major Plant breeding, and the other in Microbial Molecular Genetics. She has completed in 2003 her PhD at the Laboratory of Plant Breeding of Wageningen University on Regulation of potato tuber formation. After her postdoc in the Laboratory of Microbiology, WU, on Genomics and proteomics of Aspergillus niger, she joined the NCMLS institute of Radboud University (Nijmegen, NL) to continue research on transcription regulation in humans. In 2007 she was appointed as leader of the Biobased Economy group and Assistant Professor at Wageningen UR Plant Breeding, and since 2013 as Associate Professor. She leads a group of about 20 researchers working of developing tools for breeding of biobased crops, such as lignocellulosic (miscanthus, maize, hemp), oil (crambe, jatropha), rubber (Guayule), protein and starch (potato) crops. She is associate Editor of Bioenergy Research journal and the Bioethanol journal. Dr LM (Luisa) Trindade Group Leader Biobased Economy; Associate Professor
Module leader Module 5 Biotechnology, including seed technology and GMOs Christian Bachem was born in Mexico, educated in Sussex, UK. He received his first degree in 1980 from Bonn University in Germany where he read Agriculture and specialised in Plant Sciences. His PhD was completed at the Max Planck Institute, Cologne in 1986 in the framework of a German/Hungarian collaborative project studying Rhizobium-Legume interactions located both in Cologne and Szeged, Hungary. After post-doctoral studies into plant mitochondria (1987-1990) in Edinburgh, UK, he joined the plant biotech company Keygene (Wageningen, The Netherlands) where he was project manager for potato and developed cdna-aflp RNA-Fingerprinting technology. Since 1994 Christian Bachem has been teaching and conducting research at the University Wageningen, Laboratory of Plant Breeding in The Netherlands. His main scientific interest is in the functional genomic analysis of potato tuber development and potato tuber quality traits. He also participates in and coordinates a number of large multipartite research projects on national, European and international level and is an active member of academic organisations such as Eucarpia (member), EPSO (personal member) and SOL (SOL co-chair). Dr CWB (Christian) Bachem University teacher; Staff scientist
Module leader Module 6 Integrating all knowledge to design a breeding programme Guusje Bonnema studied Plant Breeding at Wageningen University and obtained her PhD from new Mexico State University in 1990. After that she obtained a postdoc position in INRA CNRS in Toulouse, where she worked on a tomato-yac transformation system. She returned to Wageningen in 1993, where she worked as postdoc on the interaction of tomato with Cladosporium fulvum and Fusarium oxysporum. In 2002 she managed a joint PhD program between Wageningen University and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and initiated a research program in diploid Brassica s. Main objective is to understand the genetics of the enormous morphologic variation in Brassica s, ranging from tubers in turnip and kohlrabi, to leafy non-heading or heading vegetables like kales, pakchois and cabbages, to enlarged inflorescences of cauliflower and broccoli, to oil crops like yellow sarsons. At present she is Associate Professor and leader of the Growth and Development group. She teaches the course Design of Plant breeding programs to MSc students. This course is the last MSc course of the curriculum, in which students apply all knowledge obtained in previous courses to fully design a plant breeding program for a crop and traits of their own choice. In both international post-graduate courses and this Plant Breeding course, a similar approach is taken, and students are challenged to apply all obtained knowledge of previous modules, to design an innovative plant breeding program. Dr AB (Guusje) Bonnema Associate Professor Plant Breeding; Group leader Quality and Development; Study Advisor MSc Plant Sciences / Plant Biotechnology Wageningen University