Future of Plant Breeding Education.

Texas A&M University has grown its plant breeding capacity while many land grant institutions have decreased their emphasis on plant breeding. TAMU has become one of the largest producers of Ph.D. and M.S. plant breeding graduates in the world.  This makes the A&M program vested in both predicting future needs for plant breeding and in developing a vision for how to meet those needs.  It is evident that future global need for plant breeders will be similar or increased relative to the past, but the academic and experiential training required to prepare those future scientists must expand to include bioinformatics, molecular genetics, automated phenotyping, high throughput phenotyping and genotyping, field-based activity, leadership development, business, experiential interaction with private industry, etc.  We will discuss our vision of how this breadth and depth can be managed through traditional and distant education programs.