Titel: Organic plant breeding innovations for agroecological transition
Abstract: Organic plant breeding is following a holistic systems approach to promote self-regulating ecosystems with reduced external inputs to face future environmental and societal challenges. The presentation will cover breeding for diversity a landscape level (crop diversity), field level (crop mixtures), cultivar level (heterogeneous populations) and plant level (plant associated microbiome). Inter- and transdisciplinary approaches integrating the value chain actors from seed to plate combined with supportive political and regulatory framework holds the potential for agroecological transitions and rural development in Europe and global South.
Biography:
Monika M. Messmer made her PhD in plant breeding at the University of Hohenheim in 1993. For six years she worked as scientist in the cereal breeding of Agroscope, before she joint the the start up company VitaPlant AG on medicinal plant breeding. Since 2009 she is leading the plant breeding & cultivar testing team at the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL). FiBL is an independent, non-profit, research institute conduction cutting-edge science and participatory research involving farmers to develop innovative solutions to boost organic agriculture (www.fibl.org). Main focus of research is breeding for mixed cropping systems and for plant microbe interaction. She is in the board of the European Consortium for Organic Plant Breeding (ECO – PB www.eco-pb.org), the EUCARPIA section Organic and low-input agriculture, and the EUCARPIA working group on plant microbiome interaction. She is engaged in several national and European project and conducts the scientific coordination of the EU project LIVESEED and LiveSeeding www.liveseeding.eu together with Mariateresa Lazzaro. She has initiated 2012 decentralized organic cotton breeding in India (Seeding the Green Future www.sgf-cotton.org) and promotes since 2021 orphan crops for healthier diets in Africa and Asia (www.crops4hd.org).
- since 2009 Research Associate at FiBL Switzerland
- 1998 - 2008 Head of R&D Medicinal Plant Breeding and Cultivation Research (VitaPlant AG)
- 2000 - 2003 Project leader Biotechnology in Medicinal Plants (Univ. Basel)
- 1993 - 1999 Project leader marker assisted resistance breeding (Swiss Federal Research Station Reckenholz)
- 1989 - 1993 PhD on molecular markers in plant breeding (Iowa State Univ., Univ. Hohenheim)
- 1983 - 1989 Studies in Agricultural Biology (Univ. Hohenheim)
