Agriculture Victoria molecular plant breeder Dr Abeya Tefera is expanding his knowledge to benefit the work of Horsham SmartFarm’s pulse breeding program.

On a recent study trip to the United States, Dr Tefera attended a Genomic Prediction Breeding course at the University of Florida with a special focus on applied artificial intelligence, AI, followed by field visits to the University of Minnesota.

The course brought together private sector and public organisation scientists interested in learning more about different prediction frameworks and how to integrate layers of data for plant and animal breeding.

Dr Tefera said he enjoyed fostering new ties with international peers for future collaboration and he had already applied the skills he learned to inform new AI processes to study crop development and isolate climate-resilient lentil and field pea varieties.

“Our current advanced breeding strategies are already seeing rapid gains in genetic improvement and now with AI, we can incorporate additional data such as climate and crop development processes to selectively breed resilient traits into new varieties,” he said.

“Compared to manual methods, AI is making processes more accurate and speeding up the delivery of newer and more resistant varieties within our breeding program. Our research is all about accelerating genetic gain to create higher yielding and more resilient varieties and this new application of AI is a true feather in the cap for our breeding program.”

The entire November 29, 2023 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!

The entire November 29, 2023 edition of AgLife is available online. READ IT HERE!