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Next-Gen Tools for Crops of the Future

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Gurleen Kaur

Plant Breeder, Syngenta

Session Chair

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.

Featured talks

Jaswinder Singh

Professor, Plant Science Department, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Bio
Smart Genetics for Climate-Resilient Small Grain Cereals
Patrick Shih

Associate Professor, UC Berkeley

Bio
Redesigning plants with synthetic biology

Limited understanding and genetic tools hinder plant engineering for applications in agriculture, sustainability, health, and bioenergy. We have developed a suite of synthetic biology tools and approaches to enhance our ability to modify and manipulate plant genomes for the ultimate goal of rewiring plant metabolism and transcriptional networks.

Catherine Feuillet

Chief Scientific Officer, INARI 

Bio
INARI SEEDesign™: AI‑Enabled Predictive Design Meets Multiplex Editing to Engineer Complex Traits

I will present the INARI SEEDesignTM technology platform which integrates AI enabled Predictive Design and advanced Multiplex Gene Editing tools to develop higher-yielding varieties of soybean, corn and wheat in service of Inari’s mission to meet the challenges of feeding a growing population while minimizing environmental impact of agricultural production.

Bing Yang

Professor, Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri;

Bio
Development and Application of Prime Editing for Engineering Resistance to Crop Diseases

Prime editing is an innovative toolset of genome editing that empower precise and programable genomic alterations such as all 12 types of base conversion, and small insertion and deletions. The feasibility and applicability of prime editing for engineering diseases resistance in a few crop species will be presented.

Kathleen Greenham

University of Minnesota

Bio
TBD
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Gurleen Kaur

Plant Breeder, Syngenta

Gurleen Kaur, Ph.D., is a plant breeder with expertise in global crop improvement, hybrid development, and molecular breeding. At Syngenta, she leads breeding programs for summer squash and pumpkin to deliver improved, high-performing varieties. Her Ph.D. research at the University of Florida advanced tomato flavor genetics using integrated omics tools. She also contributes to ASPB through leadership, mentoring, and service initiatives, supporting the broader plant science and breeding community.

Jaswinder Singh

Professor, Plant Science Department, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Dr. Jaswinder Singh is a Full Professor at McGill University and Director of the NSERC-CREATE program on “Genome Editing for Food Security and Environmental Sustainability.” His research integrates genomics, molecular breeding, and biotechnology to enhance crop resilience and food security. Dr. Singh earned his PhD from the University of Sydney and CSIRO, followed by postdoctoral training at UC Berkeley. He has published over 75 papers, delivered 75+ invited lectures worldwide, and mentored more than 70 researchers. His achievements have been recognized with the C.D. Nelson, Fellow, and Mary E. Spencer Awards, and as one of McGill’s top 50 professors.

Patrick Shih

Associate Professor, UC Berkeley

Patrick Shih is an Associate Professor of Plant and Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley and Investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute. He also serves as the Director of Plant Biosystems and Deputy VP of the Feedstocks Division at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, which is part of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. His lab focuses on engineering plants and microbes for biotechnological applications in agriculture, human health, sustainability, and bioenergy.

Catherine Feuillet

Chief Scientific Officer, INARI

After a PhD in plant biotechnology, Catherine Feuillet spent 20 years of research in academic institutes in Switzerland (Zurich University) and France (INRA) working on wheat genetics and genomics. She joined Bayer CropScience in 2013 as the head of Trait Research. Since 2018, she is the Chief Scientific Officer of Inari. Catherine received several awards (Legion of honour, French Academy of Science and of agriculture Prizes, AAA fellow, Top Agri-Food Pioneers of the World Food Prize Foundation) for her pioneering work in wheat genomics. Her work has been published in more than 130 peer-reviewed journals and books.

Bing Yang

Professor, Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri

Dr. Bing Yang is the Curators’ Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri – Columbia, and a member and Principal Investigator at Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. He received PhD degree in plant pathology at Kansas State University. Yang’s research areas include developing and applying gene editing tool kits for basic understanding of disease biology of crops, as well as for genetically engineering of crop plants with improved traits. Specifically, his group has developed a suite of tool sets for high-efficiency genome editing in crop plants such as rice, maize, wheat, sorghum and soybean. His research also focuses on basic understanding of host susceptibility/resistance to bacterial infection and using genome editing tools to engineer disease resistant rice varieties.

Kathleen Greenham

University of Minnesota

Kathleen Greenham joined the faculty in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of Minnesota as Assistant Professor in 2019. She received her BS in Biology at Queen’s University in Canada and PhD in Biology from the University of California, San Diego. Her lab’s research focuses on deciphering how internal timekeeping regulates plant fitness by coordinating physiological responses with the environment. Her lab applies computational approaches that integrate temporally and spatially resolved transcriptomics with physiological and metabolic outputs in both Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica rapa. These techniques are being used to uncover deeper insights into intraspecific variation in transcriptome dynamics, cell-type specific circadian regulation and new targets for crop improvement under abiotic stress.