COURSE OVERVIEW:

The only Global Hybrid Breeding Advanced Course taught by hybrid breeders! Designed for busy plant breeders, their teams, and future plant breeders, this course aids in designing and developing a true hybrid breeding engine. We cover topics from setting up breeding objectives to managing germplasm and genetic variability, understanding hybrid breeding nuances including trait organization, organizing germplasm into heterotic groups, hybrid breeding techniques, and maximizing hybrid vigor for faster genetic progress and better variety performance in farmers’ fields. In the last hour, we may invite another experienced plant breeder to join for Q&A.

This course is a recommended prerequisite for UC Davis Plant Breeding Academy.

INSTRUCTORS:

Ken Owens, Ph.D.
Ken Owens comes with over 37 years of experience in Vegetable Breeding. A University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate, Ken began his career as a cucumber and pepper breeder with Peto Seed in Woodland, California back in 1982. In 2000 he co-founded a start-up which later became recognized as Magnum Seeds where he helped establish Breeding, Seed Production, and Sales activities for 6 vegetable classes. During his prolific 37-year vegetable breeding career, Ken and his team bred countless varieties for global markets, worth almost half a Billion Dollars in Sales. Ken is looking forward to giving back and sharing his experiences with new generations of plant breeders.

Jovan Djordjevic, Ph.D.
Jovan is a plant breeder & seed executive with over 25 years of experience in the field crops and vegetable seed industries. His career began in France in 1996, as a Corn Breeder for Monsanto. Jovan continued in Canada as the Canola Breeding Lead for Monsanto, then in California as the R&D Team lead for Bayer/BASF. Throughout his prolific career, he has been a part of over 200 releases of hybrid varieties of corn, canola, tomato, pepper, sweet corn, watermelon, melon, cucumber, onions, carrots, and leek. In addition to being an SBC director of education, instructor for Plant Breeding academies and other SBC courses, Jovan is one of the founders and board director for Murray River Seeds and an industry consultant for plant breeding and business strategies with F2Gen LLC. He is looking forward, together with the SBC team of instructors, to impart his experiences to future generations of plant breeders and other seed industry professionals.

Questions? Contact us at sbc@ucdavis.edu