The plenary symposia at Plant Biology 2026 are designed to provide attendees with insights into cutting-edge scientific advances. The expert speakers will share what’s new in plant biology to help inform the work you do every day helping us, collectively, make a positive impact on plants, people and the planet.
Cell Membranes: Processes at the Perimeter
Biological membranes are a defining feature of life. This symposium brings together different aspects of membrane biology from the detailed structural organization and dynamic assembly of membrane bilayers to important functions as a facilitator of cellular communication and a regulator of ion fluxes. This excellent set of speakers in the ASPB President’s Symposium will highlight their newest research findings, and at the same time share the broader impacts of their work.
Session Chair
Kent Chapman
Featured Talks
Sébastien Mongrand
Nano Scale Organization of Plant Plasma Membranes
Noemí Ruiz Lopez
Lipid trafficking at Plasma Membrane-ER Contact Sites: Implications for Plant Stress Responses
Heather McFarlane
Cell Wall Signaling and Responses at the Plasma Membrane
Michael R. Blatt
Building Blocks for Transport Bioengineering
Plant Adaptation to Extreme Environments
As sessile organisms permanently restricted to their site of germination, plants have developed, over the course of evolution, unique mechanisms that allow them to thrive in the environment without moving. In this session, we will first talk about how plants sense their environment in the rhizosphere, and then discuss how plants response to unfavorable environments at the subcellular level. We will also discuss novel genomic and genetic tools by which we can manipulate crops to improve agriculture in the face of rapid climate change
Session Chair
Hugo Zheng
Featured Talks
Shelley Lumba
Decoding plant signals in the rhizosphere
Federica Brandizzi
Stress unfolded: When Proteins Misfold, Plants Adapt
Sophia L. Stone
Ubiquitin System in Stress Response
Yasin Dagdas
Evolutionary Origins & Mechanisms of Cellular Quality Control
Sateesh Kagale
Prescriptive breeding: a next-generation paradigm for crop improvement
Plants Communicating with their Neighbors
Being sessile organisms, it is helpful for plants to both know what and how many other plants are growing next to them, and if their neighbors are being attacked by insects or pathogens or abiotic stressors, so they can make appropriate changes to their physiology and development. This session will highlight some of the exotic ways plants recognize and respond to their neighbors, and to show how these signaling systems might be leveraged to improve crop yields.
Session Chair
David Horvath
Featured Talks
Choong-Min Ryu
Plant acoustic communications: can plant talk and listen
Natalia Doudareva
Secret Conversations of Plants: Decoding Their Chemical Language
Clarence Swanton
Talking Plants and why we should listen
Fabrice Roux
The ecologically relevant genetics of plant-plant interactions
Jacqueline Monaghan
Phosphorylation-based regulation of plant immune signalling
Next-Gen Tools for Crops of the Future
This plenary session spotlights next-generation innovations — from prime editing for disease resistance and AI-driven seed design to smart genetics for climate-ready cereals and synthetic biology for reimagining plant traits. Together, these breakthroughs reveal a transformative toolkit for creating high-yielding, resilient crops of the future.
Session Chair
Gurleen Kaur
Featured Talks
Jaswinder Singh
Smart Genetics for Climate-Resilient Small Grain Cereals
Patrick Shih
Redesigning plants with synthetic biology
Catherine Feuillet
INARI SEEDesign™: AI‑Enabled Predictive Design Meets Multiplex Editing to Engineer Complex Traits
Bing Yang
Development and Application of Prime Editing for Engineering Resistance to Crop Diseases
Kathleen Greenham
TBD
Gibbs Symposium: Auxin Signaling
The complexity of auxin biology is reflected by diverse signaling mechanisms and downstream responses. In this symposium, four outstanding speakers will describe their recent discovery of novel signaling pathways detailed mechanisms of transcription and structural aspects of hormone regulated cell growth.
Session Chair
Mark Estelle
Featured Talks
Matyas Fendrych
The mechanism of rapid auxin response in Arabidopsis
Stéphanie Robert
The role of the plant cuticle during apical hook development
Lucia C. Strader
Understanding transcription in plants
