Next generation plant breeding programs, KWS Germany

Teachers

• John Hickey
• Gregor Gorjanc
• Steve Thorn
• Chris Gaynor

Presentations

• Plant and animal breeding - exploit new technologies in different ways and at different scales
• Compare and Contrast of Breeding programs
• Genomic data
• Phasing and imputation with heuristics
• Sequencing strategies and how to exploit it in breeding
• Optimal Cross Selection (Optimal contribution selection & Cross Allocation)
• Hidden Markov Models for Imputation
• AlphaSimR - A flexible package to simulate breeding programs

Practicals

We used AlphaLearn for the practical exercises in this course. AlphaLearn is an R package containing practical exercises used in short courses given by the Hickey group. Exercises include an introduction to the breeder’s equation, basic concepts of marker imputation, and the application of genomic selection. Also included are introductions to several of the software programs developed by the Hickey group. AlphaLearn is available from this link.