Breedinggames Software and Professional Skills for Plant Scientists Graduate Course.

This talk will focus on two recent enhancements to plant breeding education at the University of Minnesota. BreedingGames is for gamification of plant breeding. The software was unveiled during a plant breeding tournament in Saint Paul in March 2017. About 75 participants were divided into small teams, and each team made breeding decisions in an attempt to develop a simulated barley cultivar that met certain standards for three traits that show unfavorable correlations: grain yield, protein concentration, and disease resistance. Each team decided which parents to cross; how many crosses to make; how many progeny to create in each cross; when and how to use markers in selection; how many locations to use in phenotyping; and which specific progeny to select in each stage--all while staying within a fixed budget. Winners were given nice prizes. Professional Skills for Plant Scientists was taught as a 2-credit graduate course in Saint Paul in spring 2017. During the course, 21 students learned about leadership, management, and soft skills that they need to succeed in the workplace. Specific goals were to increase student awareness and improve student skills in leading people, and in managing money, time, operations, and projects. Overall, BreedingGames and the Professional Skills course were deemed as helpful in preparing plant breeding students to lead and manage cultivar development programs.