Wheat Improvement Food Security in a Changing Climate

Matthew Reynolds ([email protected]) is Distinguished Scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) and alumnus of Oxford (BA), Reading (MS) and Cornell (PhD) Universities. He currently leads the Wheat Physiology lab at CIMMYT, and serves on the management committee of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, as well as leading its community of practice for crop modelling. His pioneering work in phenomics and in physiological breeding have helped widen the spring wheat genepool and increased understanding of yield potential and adaptation of wheat to drought and heat stress. He has been active in developing global collaborations to tap into expertise of plant scientists worldwide –such as the International Wheat Yield Partnership and the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium, with the view to underpinning food security through crop improvement with a special focus on the Global South. He has published widely in the areas of cropphysiology, genomics and pre-breeding and has been included in the top 1%, of the world's researchers since 2018 -most recently across plant and animal sciences- by Web of Science. He has honorary positions at Nottingham, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma State Universities and is board member of the Global Plant Council. He is Fellow of both the Crop Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy and was appointed to the Mexican Academy of Science in 2018.

Hans-Joachim Braun, a native of Germany with background in wheat breeding has led CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program from 2004 until 2020, when he retired. He was responsible for technical direction and implementation of the program and lead and managed 40 internationally recruited scientists, who develop wheat germplasm that is distributed to around 200 cooperators in more than 100 countries and grown of more than 50% of the spring wheat area in developing countries. During his 37 years in International Agriculture, he became familiar with all major wheat based systems globally. He lived from 1985 to 2005 in Turkey, leading the Turkey CIMMYT ICARDA International Winter Wheat Improvement Program. He contributed to the development of more than 40 winter wheat varieties released mainly in West and Central Asia, which are grown on more than 2 million ha. Braun was instrumental in recognizing Zn deficiency and soil borne diseases as a major constraint for winter wheat production in the dryland areas of West Asia. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and received various awards, including the Friendship Award of China for his contribution to develop disease resistant wheat lines for Gansu province, the Crop Science of America Fellowship Award and the International Agronomy Award of the American Society of Agronomy. Braun received his Ph.D. from the University of Hohenheim, Germany in 1983.