Dr Mark Messmer, VP of Breeding and Product Delivery at CoverCress, Inc, is breeding a well-known winter annual weed into a cash crop that benefits farmers’ bottom line and the environment.  

In this episode of the Plant Breeding Stories podcast, Mark explains why this particular project brought him out of retirement after a long, successful career in the seed industry. We learn about the challenges that the CoverCress team has to overcome to breed wild pennycress, a winter annual weed, into a commercial crop.  He also discusses the potential markets for this new oilseed crop, including biofuel, animal feed and food production uses, and gives us a glimpse of what it takes to commercialize a new crop through the eyes of a startup company.  

 

To find out more go to  

https://covercress.com 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-messmer-53451873/

Transcript - www.PBSInternational.com/podcast

S3E3  Plant Breeding Stories - Mark Messmer

Episode 1 of 6 – Why do we need AgTech?

The global food system faces serious problems – environmental, social and commercial.  This six-part podcast series seeks to unravel these complex interrelationships asking how we can better align the interests of the environment, farmers, entrepreneurs and investors, allowing new Agtech solutions to address these critical challenges.

In this episode, we explore why new technology is needed in agriculture … and when it is not.  

We ask where and how new technologies will help with some of agriculture’s biggest challenges including: longstanding labour shortages and widespread issues of poor working conditions; why and how the food system makes up 1/3rd of greenhouse gas emissions; biodiversity loss and land use change; and how poor farmer profitability exacerbates the sector’s capacity to respond to these challenges.  

Featured in this Episode 
•	Juliet Ansell, Zespri International
•	Sarah Mock, Author 
•	Brent Loken, WWF
•	Francesco Tubello, FAO
•	Ethan Cleary, Irish Farmers Association

Further Reading 
The following resources are those I found helpful or were recommended by my interviewees 
Books  - available from https://www.betterworldbooks.com
•	The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
•	Hog Wild by Lynn Waltz 
•	Farm and Other F Words by Sarah Mock
•	Freedom Farmers by LaDonna Redmond & Monica M White
•	Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
•	How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

Online Reports 
•	Bringing it Down to Earth – Nature Risk and Agriculture https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?2660466/nature-finance-risk-and-agriculture
•	Milked by the Immigrant Dary Farmworkers in New York State 
http://www.iwj.org/resources/milked-immigrant-dairy-farmworkers-in-new-york-state

Epsiode 1 Innovating AgTech - Why Do We Need AgTech?

Welcome to the Plant Breeding Stories podcast. This is a short teaser for the upcoming podcast series. If you like what you hear, click subscribe to the podcast and you'll get the next episode delivered direct to your device when it's released.

Introduction to Season One

Dr. Alison Bentley, Program Director of the Global Wheat Program at CIMMYT, shares how her work in wheat breeding delivers more robust varieties that meet farmer and consumer needs around the world. She describes the process of pre-breeding, introducing advantageous commercial traits from native or wild type plant species to increase the genetic diversity critical for any successful plant breeding program.

Find more of Alison Bentley here:
Twitter: @AlisonRBentley
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-bentley-98861959/
In this episode, Bentley will discuss her work in wheat which spans three continents — Australia, Europe and North America. We’ll follow along as she describes visiting some of the earliest sites of human civilization near Turkey, where plant domestication began & searching for wild relatives of grains in Australian grasslands. Bentley also talks about her new role at CIMMYT and why she’s excited about its global, cross-disciplinary focus.

A transcript of this podcast can be found on the PBS International website www.pbsinternational.com/podcast

Find out more about Dr Bentley on Twitter, @AlisonRBentley, and more about CIMMYT via their website https://www.cimmyt.org

S1E1 Plant Breeding Stories - Alison Bentley

Entrepreneurs Will Pelton and Nick Kral, founders of Phytoform Labs, explain the genome editing technology that is the foundation of their business and share why they are excited about their platform's potential to deliver new crop traits efficiently, safely and sustainably.  

Introducing a new trait into a crop can take years with traditional breeding methods.  Pelton and Kral discuss speeding up the process and improving accuracy by adopting recent genome editing developments in plant breeding technology, akin to the well known CRISPR-Cas9, and describe how they're using artificial intelligence to build new exploration tools to develop novel crop traits. 

As the global regulatory framework for new breeding technologies continues to evolve, the founders of Phytoform Labs explain how they’re working to make the most impact with their technology and why they hope to improve the sustainability of the agricultural supply chain, starting with trait development in the Solanaceae family.

A transcript of this podcast can be found on the PBS International website www.pbsinternational.com/podcast

A transcript of this podcast is available at www.pbsinternational.com/podcast

Find out more about Phytoform labs here:
Twitter: @PhytoformLabs
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/phytoform-labs/

S1E2 Plant Breeding Stories - Phytoform Labs

Plant Breeding Stories spotlights the individuals within the plant breeding world.  We talk to breeders, scientists and entrepreneurs looking at what they do, what makes them tick, and what fascinates them about the world of plants.  We’ll be highlighting some of the challenges faced in agriculture today, including government regulations, climate change, and changing consumer demands. 

The show is hosted by Hannah Senior of PBS International – world leaders in pollination control.  PBS International design and produce specialist pollination bags and tents used by plant breeders and seed producers all around the world. 

Hannah shares some unique perspectives given by key industry influencers about how plant breeding affects our diets, farming systems and the environment.

S1E2 Plant Breeding Stories - Phytoform Labs

Plant Breeding Stories

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