COURSE OVERVIEW:

Level 1: R for the Plant Breeders, Scientists, Trial Specialists, Agronomists, and their teams
- Introduction, set-up, and workflows
This module aims to introduce Seed industry professionals to the world of R and to guide them through setting up their work environments, tools, and workflows. This course will use the power of RStudio and the plethora of tools in the Tidyverse to guide the student through the whole process from data collection, good practices on data organization, reporting, and everything in between, always with the goals of transparency and reproducibility. This module is for beginners and those that didn’t have a chance to use R often. Attending Level 1 to engage in level 2 in June and higher levels 3 and 4 in September and December is recommended.

This course is also a recommended prerequisite for UC Davis Plant Breeding Academy. As a bonus, if a student applies for the academy, and is accepted, then expenses for R Level 1 or any single E-Series would be waived.

Level 2: ​​​​​​R for the Plan Breeder – Data exploration, visualization, and reporting basics
This Module builds  from Module 1: Intro to R Markdown tool to create high quality dynamic reports and presentations with minimal efforts in a single, reproducible format, such as HMTL, PDF, Word, or slides. Data exploration and wrangling; ggplot; foundation statistics, model fitting, ANOVA, testing; intro to SpATS; digging through model outputs. Visualize, communicate, and influence!! “The simple graph has brought more information to the data analyst’s mind than any other device.” — John Tukey.

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

Level 3: R for the Plant Breeders & Scientists – Intermediate workflows and application in Plant Breeding and Research
This module builds on previous modules on this R sub-series and hopes to complement the E-Series #1 “Statistics and Experimental design” by showcasing examples and best practices of how to address basic statistical problems in plant breeding, assist with experimental design, and contribute to more effective plant breeding program output or research project outcome. 

Level 4: R for the Plant Breeders and Scientists – Advanced workflows and application in Plant Breeding and Research
This module complements the statistical E-Series by showcasing examples and best practices for addressing statistical problems in plant breeding and assisting with experimental design. This module may demonstrate advanced and peer-reviewed applications for Plant Breeding. In addition, we will introduce powerful tools such as functional programming to help you simplify and automate common data analysis tasks.

INSTRUCTORS:

Jose Luis Rodriguez Gil, Ph.D.
Dr. Jose Luis Rodriguez Gil is an ecotoxicologist and environmental risk scientist with almost two decades of experience characterizing the effects of contaminants on the environment and aquatic systems. Jose Luis has worked with many classes of chemicals over the years but having completed his Ph.D. at the University of Guelph (Canada), a large portion of his work has focussed on plant protection products and agricultural settings. The large and complex nature of the datasets resulting from his research led him into the world of R, a subject he has been teaching at the university level for a few years, and for which he has received several awards.   

Alexandra Tomerius, Ph.D.
While earning her doctorate at the University of Hohenheim, Dr. Alexandra Tomerius worked in close cooperation with private industry plant breeding companies. She further devoted herself to the optimization of plant breeding as a post-graduate through early work as a research associate and later work as a freelance consultant. She was involved in projects related to the optimization of breeding winter wheat (Lochow-Petkus GmbH) and winter oilseed rape (DSV Deutsche Saatveredelung, Lippstadt). Since 2011, she has been and still is working for different private companies as a plant breeding consultant as well as giving training courses to academia and private industry in various fields of plant breeding, with a focus on statistics, field trial design, and breeding scheme optimization. 

Jovan Djordjevic, Ph.D.
Jovan Djordjevic spent over 25 cumulative years with Monsanto, Limagrain, and BASF Vegetable Seeds, where he was most recently director of their research and breeding teams and developed crop strategy (vegetable seeds) as BASF Vegetable's Global R and D Team Lead for breeding. An accomplished and experienced plant breeder, he brings broad-based expertise in plant breeding research and development, including the application of new technologies in breeding, building innovation culture & teams, linking business and complex R and D activities, and building organizational strategies centered around customers and consumers. Jovan is passionate about plant breeding and research technologies contributing to world food production, in particular those that involve fewer detrimental environmental impacts.

Questions? Contact Jeffrey Robinson at jerobinson@ucdavis.edu