David S. Douches

David S. Douches, with over 40 years of experience in potato breeding, genetics and biotechnology, has an active potato breeding program directed toward the development of improved cultivars in Michigan for 35 years. The focus of the program is to develop new cultivars for Michigan’s potato industry by integrating new genetic engineering/ gene editing with conventional breeding efforts. Key traits targeted for improvement Colorado potato beetle resistance, disease resistance to scab, late blight, PVY, and chip processing from long-term storage. This breeding and biotech effort has expanded to include diploid breeding. Dave leads the Michigan State University potato breeding and genetics project and co-PI in the North Central Regional Potato Breeding and Genetics project. He is also director of the USAID-funded Global Biotech Potato Project for Africa and South East Asia and the lead scientist in developing four potato SNP arrays used by the potato breeding and genetics community.

Thomas Lübberstedt

Thomas Lübberstedt is Professor and K.J. Frey Chair at the Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University (ISU). Thomas serves as Director of the R.F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding, and the Distance M.S. in Plant Breeding program. He is founder of the Doubled Haploid (DH) Facility, and Faculty Scholar of Plant Sciences Institute at ISU. Thomas served as chair of the Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee (PBCC) in 2016/17. He continued to contribute to the PBCC education objective and will be co-host of the 2022 NAPB meeting at ISU.

Thomas grew up on a horticultural farm in Hamburg, Germany, and studied Horticulture at University of Hannover. He earned his Dr. rer. nat. at the Ludwig Maximilan University of Munich in 1993, where he analyzed promoters of photosynthesis genes and DNA regulatory proteins. During this time he developed his interest in integrating plant breeding with biotechnologies including molecular genetics. Thomas has been working as (equivalent to the U.S.) assistant professor at University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart. His main topic was the analysis of quantitative trait loci for forage and resistance traits in maize. Before joining ISU in 2007, he has been working as senior scientist at the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, where his overall theme was the implementation of genomic approaches into forage grass breeding, aiming at the development of diagnostic “functional” DNA markers. Of particular interest was the lignification of cell walls in relation to forage quality in maize and other grasses. Over the past ca. 8 years, Thomas focused his research primarily on DH technology and its application, which resulted in USDA- and FFAR-funded projects, and novel germplasm including haploid inducers.

Thomas is teaching Molecular Plant Breeding to on campus and distance students at ISU. He has been and is serving as major professor of more than 30 PhD students. The Distance MS in Plant Breeding program at ISU, launched in 2011 under Thomas direction, educated more than 50 graduates, and contributed significantly to the Plant Breeding E-Learning in Africa (PBEA) program.

Joann Conner

Associate Research Scientist; Areas of Interest: Apomixis

Joann Conner is an Associate Research Scientist at The University of Georgia who has been researching various topics of apomixis for twenty years. Her research goal remains to identify the genetic components responsible for apomixis in natural species and to transfer this mechanism into crop species

Oscar Riera-Lizarazu

Dr. Oscar Riera·Lizarazu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX, USA. Dr. Riera-Lizarazu works on rose genetics and breeding with the goal of developing, testing, and releasing improved varieties of roses with regional and national adaptation as well as conducting research on the use of genomics-based tools for rose variety development and understanding the genetic basis of traits in Rosa and related horticultural crops.

Dr. Riera-Lizarazu has >20 years of national and international research experience on plant genetics, cytogenetics, and breeding. Prior to his assignment at Texas A&M, Dr. Riera-Lizarazu held various senior-level positions in the private sector such as Global Wheat and Sorghum Breeding Leader at Dow AgroSciences and the North America (NA) Regional Crops’ Technology Leader at Corteva Agriscience, the Agricultural Division of DowDuPont. Prior to working in the private sector, Dr. Riera-Lizarazu served internationally in director-level positions at the Int. Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India and as a tenured faculty in Department of Crop and Soil Science at Oregon State University, USA. Dr. Riera-Lizarazu has also held research scientist positions at the International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico and the Bolivian Institute of Agricultural Technology (IBTA), Bolivia.

Oscar Riera-Lizarazu received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Plant Science from the Utah State University and a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Genetics from the University of Minnesota, USA.

Jamie Layton

Jamie started working in an ARS wheat genetics during undergraduate school and fell deeply in love. After her Bachelor’s degree, she obtained a Master’s degree specializing in Plant Breeding and Genetics. She was eager to get to work, so she decided not to pursue a Ph.D. but has since obtained 17+ years of experience at Corteva Agriscience!

At Corteva, she has worked in high-throughput genotyping process development, disease resistance gene characterization and cloning, and predictive breeding methods. She has been working in sunflower breeding for the last ten years and specializes in molecular and predictive breeding. She also leads sunflower new trait discovery and deployment.