On the 22nd of June, the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology opened the doors to the first edition of the Translational Research in Crops (TRIC23) conference. This two-day event brought together scientists in the field of crop research from both industry and academia for various presentations, poster sessions, and peer networking.
The presentations were clustered into six topics: Healthier crops, improving crops through plant architecture, plants coping with biotic stress, plants coping with abiotic stress, beneficial interactions with the soil microbiome, and a deep dive into centuries of crop breeding.
After a welcome coffee, Cathie Martin from the John Innes Centre (UK) kicked off the conference. She focused on enhancing the nutritional values of tomatoes by using gene editing. Other speakers included Idan Efroni from the Hebrew University in Israel, who guided us through plants’ cis-regulatory code and how this is conserved in the course of evolution. On the second day, Ndjido Kane from ISRA-CERAAS in Senegal introduced us to his research on improving drought tolerance in pearl millet by targeting root traits, and Maria Harrison from the Boyce Thompson Institute for plant research (US) broadened our horizon by shining a light on mycorrhizal symbiosis to enhance phosphate acquisition. The common goal uniting all these researchers? To provide the world with sustainable food sources for the years to come.
The poster sessions on both Thursday and Friday, poster sessions culminated in the JXB Poster Prize offered by the Journal of Experimental Biology. The first prize went to Isaia Vardanega from the Heinrich Heine Universität in Dusseldorf (Germany) for his poster 'Novel barley spike architectures from tinkering with key stem cell regulators'. “I am thankful to everyone who voted for my poster,” says a smiling Isaia. “It is a nice confirmation of our work. The event was very inspiring, I met great people and I got to see fascinating works. Everyone with the common aim to translate basic knowledge into practical applications in crop plants.”
The second prize went to Naomi Steur from our own VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology for 'The in planta identification of Rhizophagus irregularis effectors using Turbo-ID and FANS'. Naomi explains, "It's wonderful to get this recognition. The characterization of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) effectors is crucial to increase the applicability of AMF in the field, which holds great potential towards more sustainable agriculture."
Lieven de Veylder, a member of the organizing committee, summarized it as follows: "The meeting showcased how we can benefit from new genome-editing techniques to combat climate stability worldwide."
Our two conference reporters – Siel Goethals (PhD student in the lab of Inge De Clercq) and Laurens Pauwels (manager of the Crop Genome Engineering Facility) – experienced everything firsthand.
On the speakers:
Siel: "Given my research interest in plant-pathogen interactions, I was fascinated by the talks given by Barbara De Coninck and Sophien Kamoun. Especially, the talk from Sophien Kamoun about how we can trick a pathogen and his research on NLR immune receptors from plants will stay with me for a long time. Maria Harrison and Giles Oldroyd spoke about micro-organisms that can help the plant's nutrient uptake and enhance the yield, which is astonishing! Think about all the potential for future breeding programs once they will include the benefits of these symbioses.
Laurens: Cristobal Uauy from the John Innes Centre in the UK gave a talk on wheat genomics. By studying the genomes of various wheat varieties and wild relatives he posed the question "Quis est Triticum aestivum?" Who is wheat? He went on to show that wheat varieties are actually a conglomerate of wild and partially domesticated species. This has implications on what we label 'cisgenic' in regulation as our current classically bred varieties are a mixture of various species already. Raquel L. Chan from Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL) in Argentina presented a fantastic story of a sunflower transcription factor HaHB4 to improve maize, wheat, and soybean drought tolerance and yield. In collaboration with the company Bioceres, this work led to the world’s first commercial genetically engineered Wheat, HB4® wheat.
On lessons learned:
Laurens: "There are significant bottlenecks to translating basic research to crops. One of them is to be able to transform and regenerate a wider variety of crops and crop varieties. We have seen talks by Ling Meng from KWS and Daniel Voytas from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities with new technologies to address this issue, but more research is needed to make these technologies more efficient and routine.
Siel: "I agree. Getting research translated is not as straightforward as one might think, which once also demonstrated by certain speakers. For example, Arabidopsis is a model plant that is a dicot and is intensively studied, but what if you switch your research to maize, which is a monocot? Certain processes, genes, etc. might be present in one but not in the other or the other way around and this was part of Hilde Nelissen's talk. Conferences like this are pivotal for a better future and the community present there is one filled with support and much needed to strengthen and enhance the translational research towards crops.
On the experience:
Siel: "I had a wonderful time at TRIC23. As a PhD student, I am fairly new to translational research, despite my great interest in it. During this conference, I heard how people from all kinds of different backgrounds and interests want to help toward more sustainable and durable agriculture. It was inspiring to hear. Additionally, I found the lineup at TRIC23 amazing, extremely diverse, and inspiring for a young researcher like me. This conference has given me a lot of food for thought but in a good way.
Laurens: "Couldn't agree more. Researchers from academia and industry from all over the world attended TRIC23 and it was a good environment to meet both existing collaborators and to establish new research contacts."
Our resident Plant Science communication Expert Steve Bers added that: "What I really enjoyed about the TRIC conference was the diversity of the group of speakers. People worldwide tackling the same challenges and learning from each other is nothing short of inspiring. The last slide from Cristobal Uauy summarized it perfectly by emphasizing that his research on wheat diversity finds its base in the human diversity of his lab."
We want to thank all attendees, speakers, and sponsors for making this a memorable edition, and can't wait to see you all at the next edition.
You can find photos of the event here.
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