The 21st Century Plant Breeder.

For this presentation I am defining a plant breeder as an individual whose principal research responsibility is the development of plant genotypes that express improved phenotypes.  Successful plant breeders have been and will continue to be integrators of multiple technologies many of which were developed in scientific disciplines other than their own.  These disciplines have traditionally included the areas of classical, population, and quantitative genetics, statistics, plant pathology, and plant physiology.  Recent developments by genomic scientists have provided breeders with the tools to describe, understand, and improve crop genomes at unprecedented levels of precision. The successful deployment of these new tools requires breeders to further broaden their disciplinary knowledge and training.  The addition of DNA marker technologies to a conventional breeding program often results in a several fold increase in the amount of data the breeder has available to base their selection decisions.  Thus, the contemporary breeder must possess the skills to manage, analyze, and manipulate the ever increasing amounts of data produced by these technologies.  Additionally, the access to the new genomic technologies along with transgenic and conventional parental germplasm is controlled by an ever increasing level of intellectual property protection.  While on one hand there is a broadening of the disciplinary and legal knowledge and training required to become a plant breeder, the job responsibilities of many contemporary industry breeders are becoming more specialized (e.g., trait integration breeding, line development breeding, commercial breeding). When taken together these issues create a level of uncertainty regarding the importance of specialization verses generalization in our approaches to training the next generation of plant breeders.  The implications of these issues on the education and training of plant breeders and the resultant need for enhanced life-long learning opportunities for plant breeders will be discussed.