W6 : IN VITRO TECHNOLOGY : A MARGINAL OR A KEY TOOL TO IMPLEMENT BREEDING AND CONSERVATION STRATEGIES ?

This workshop is designed primarily for horticulturists who are in the early stages of their careers. The goal of this workshop is to address a topic that rarely gets openly

The workshop objective is to discuss the role of in vitro technologies and micropropagation for plant breeding and plant conservation. At a time when epigenetics, omics and gene editing seem to be the future, how in vitro technologies can make bridges between plant breeding, conservation of plant genetic resources and plant development. Which strategies must be adopted to attract young researchers to this field and how can we positively impact the society in solving problems such as food production and to implement programs such as the international strategies “Farm to Fork” of “Green Deal” or some of the Sustainable Developmental goals of UNESCO?
The moderator will present a short communication about some key issues related with this subject and then the discussion will be open to the audience and a panel including a representative from industry, a young researcher and a scientist from a research institute.
The following key issues will be addressed during the discussion:
• The relevance of micropropagation for private companies
• Competitiveness of micropropagation technologies face to other cloning methods
• What will be role of plant tissue culture in genomic times
• What is the public perception of plant tissue culture?
The outputs of the workshop will be presented in a paper to be published in Acta Horticulturae.