University-Industry-Government Partnerships in Education: Training of Plant Breeders for Technical and Global Competence.

Increasingly, our globalized society is demanding the highest level of technical competencies from future generations of scientists and educators including plant breeders.  To fill the looming gap in high performing expertise and to secure the stability of our food, fiber and shelter supplies, more partnerships with higher education that value investment in workforce development must be encouraged and supported.  Partnerships and collaboration must be forged amongst the private and public sectors and higher education, taking into account funding availability, mentorship, pedagogy, learning outcomes and other areas including global competency to build robust applied plant breeding programs at universities.  Issues such as confidentiality; intellectual property rights; level and duration of funding for training; industry internships and requisite skill-sets must be addressed to promote widespread collaborations. Although there are barriers to collaborations, there are examples of successful partnership with industry, academia and government in higher education.  For over three decades, Colleges of Engineering have thrived with such partnerships. Successful collaborations and partnerships involving Colleges of Agriculture and the private/public sector exist.  Plant breeders must seek, foster and develop such partnerships so that the next generation will be prepared for the professional world.  The recent Academic Competitiveness Council Report addressed outcome metrics for graduate education in the sciences that includes plant breeding.  Classical plant breeding and quantitative genetics with cutting edge training in genomics and bioinformatics must be the baseline to address the increasing expertise shortage in translating advances in research to practice.  As new biological data are generated at an unparalleled rate, it is imperative that private and public sector and higher education partners take a futuristic view to ensure that students are trained in environments that target emerging issues and technologies.  Partnerships and collaborations will generate integrative learning opportunities and, ultimately, plant breeding experts who will be integral contributors to the food, fiber and shelter systems domain.