Plant Breeding

Plant breeding is a key driver of sustainable agricultural production and management of natural resources. The challenges of a globally growing demand for agricultural food and non-food products, the limited availability of natural resources and changing climatic conditions have made the genetic improvement of crop plants through breeding a major task of agricultural research.

Research in the plant breeding group concentrates on the genetic analysis of complex traits with QTL and association analyses and the elucidation of genetic phenomena such as epistasis and heterosis. The group runs a molecular lab with genotyping facilities and has expertise in quantitative genetics and breeding methodology. Understanding functional biodiversity for complex traits and translating it into optimized breeding strategies is the major focus of our work.

Teaching aims at providing a profound training in modern plant breeding. Courses are offered on classical subjects such as quantitative genetics and breeding methodology as well as on molecular tools and techniques.