Plant breeding for agroecological farming systems is key to combat the challenges of climate change and to achieve the transition towards sustainable food systems.

1. Abiotic challenges (drought, flooding, heat, cold tolerance, UV stress) are major environmental stresses affecting agriculture worldwide and expected to increase in the scope of climate change. Breeding for tolerance / resilience against such abiotic stresses are important breeding goals to maintain impacts agricultural productivity. To combine tolerance against multiple stresses involves integrating plant physiology, root morphology, microbiome, molecular genetics, and phenotyping platforms under various stresses to develop drought and flooding tolerant cultivars. Plant breeding can address these challenges by screening genetic resources, crop wild relatives, selecting under extreme environments, using natural selection for adaptation of novel crops, shuttle breeding, high-throughput phenotyping and genotyping to create climate-resilient cultivars.

2. Combining sustainability and resource use efficiency. There is also a pressing need to reconcile agricultural productivity with sustainability. Breeders are tasked with developing high-yielding crops that require fewer resources, such as water and fertilizers, while also enhancing their nutritional value and soil fertility. This challenge is critical as the agricultural sector must reduce its environmental footprint while meeting the food demands of a growing population. Major challenges are: water scarcity for agricultural irrigation; temporary nutrient deficiency, salinity and heavy metal contamination that significantly reduce crop growth and productivity as well as food safety. Nutrient and water use efficient cultivars and cropping systems are key for more sustainable production.

3. Biotic stresses caused by plant diseases, pests, nematodes, viruses, phytoplasma etc. cause substantial crop losses and threaten global food security. Breeding for resistance or tolerance involves understanding host-pathogen interactions, plant associated microbiome and immune reaction traits utilizing efficient screening methods. Breeding for resistance is important for all agroecological farming systems to reduce pesticide inputs. Resistance to seed and soil borne diseases are of special relevance for organic farming systems as no synthetic seed treatments are allowed. Of special interest for organic and agroecological agriculture are breeding approaches focusing on symbiosis with microorganisms and plant associated microbiome (see also the special working group on plant microbe interaction of EUCARPIA Section organic and low-input agriculture).

5. Breeding for agrobiodiversity and ecosystem services. Maintaining and enhancing agrobiodiversity is crucial for resilient agricultural systems. Breeders are challenged to incorporate greater diversity into cropping systems, which mitigate risks associated with monocultures like epidemic pests and diseases, erosion, soil carbon losses, and nutrient runoff. At the same time diversified cropping systems provide different ecosystem services and contribution to self-regulating systems. Plant breeding needs to support multicrop systems, which increase temporal and spatial diversity, to address these problems. This requires a shift in breeding programs to focus on diverse rotations, alternate-season crops, ae well as intercropping system, agroforestry, permaculture, etc.

6. Healthy food (nutrients, taste, cultural heritage, culinary breeding) can be achieved by breeding of neglected, traditional or novel crops. By implementing consumer expectations into breeding processes, culinary breeding supports the transformation towards sustainable food systems. Besides taste and shelf-life, nutrient content becomes more important for healthy plant-based diets. High-throughput methods are needed to assess and select for increased protein content, macro and micro nutrients (iron, zinc, essential amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, secondary metabolites and anti-oxidant activities and reduced anti-nutritional compounds. Many times we are facing trade-offs between yield and quality traits and between resistance and low anti-nutrient compounds. Main challenge is therefore to bridging farmers’ and consumers’ needs.

In order to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) plant breeding also needs to address wider societal challenges. Based on the systems-based breeding concept of Lammerts van Bueren et al. (2018), breeders need to produce cultivars that strengthen both ecological and societal resilience, supporting local food and seed sovereignty and social justice. This requires a change of attitude towards corporate responsibility, circular economy, true-cost accounting, and green policies, collaboration between different actors as well as innovative models of entrepreneurship. Plant breeders can play a crucial role in tackling the complex issues.

7. Participatory breeding and decentralized on-farm cultivar testing. The massive consolidation of the seed sector and increase in patent applications on plants bears the risk of limited access to genetic resources accompanied by a loss of agrobiodiversity. Organic and participatory plant breeding (PPB) provides an alternative approach supporting local communities and rural development. Different modes are in place to deal with IPR rights related to plant breeding (PVR, patents, open source seed, fair breeding, exclusive club varieties, etc.). Lighthouse projects on farmer, community or value chain driven plant breeding shall be exchanged to identify success factors of PPB. Decentralized participatory cultivar evaluation trials are a frugal approach to assess suitability for organic production and promote adoption of novel cultivars. farmers rights, legal framework of ITPGRFA, PRM law, Farmers privilege and breeder’s exemption, open source, beyond intellectual Property rights, Fair Breeding, Integrating organic breeding into food policy 

8. Innovative financial and governance models are needed to sustain small scale and local breeding initiatives and business models for organic seed. Therefore, it is important to analyse the added socioeconomic value of organic bred varieties (OV) and organic heterogeneous material (OHM), testing different labels, marketing and communication tools for market introduction. Different business models need to be developed and validated to promote economically viable entrepreneurship of organic plant breeding and seed production. This can include the integration of breeding into value chain/network partnership, pool or crowd founding, or public support. Studies on the demand of organic seed and limitations of existing varieties can help to close the gap.

9. Impact of EU regulations on organic agriculture and rural development. Supporting legal and normative framework are needed to sustain organic breeding initiatives and breeding activities targeting organic and agroecological farming systems. The present draft of the EU regulation on the marketing of Plant Reproductive Material (EU PRM law) foresees more flexibility to facilitate the market access for heterogeneous material and organic bred varieties. However, the proposed EU deregulation of new genomic techniques (EU NGT law) and increasing number of patents (European Patent Convention) is a major challenge for the organic seed and breeding sectors with implications for the future organic and non-GM breeding strategy.

• Abstract need to be submitted exclusively using the online form (mandatory requirement). Abstracts sent in other formats will not be taken into consideration;
• Abstracts must be submitted in English;
• Once an abstract is submitted you will no longer be able to make any changes. However, author(s) might be asked for minor revisions by the reviewers.
• Title should be in Sentence case (e.g., **Breeding for diversity**) max. 160 characters
• Authors and affiliations: list all co-authors, including their organisation with address and country in the online submission tool. Please refer to the abstract example.
• Add up to 5 keywords separated by a coma, all in small case
• Main text should be in plain text in Arial 12 font with no subheadings and include an introduction, objectives, material and methods, results, discussion and conclusions. No figure or tables are allowed. Please keep references to a minimum.
• The first time you cite a biological species, include the scientific name written in italics (not underlined) and authority (Lupinus albus L.). Once cited the scientific name, in the rest of the text can be used the common name of the species. The units of the International System of Units should be used.
• For references in text use (Rossi et al. 2019) or Rossi et al. (2019). Short acknowledgements and references (not more than three) are optional. Use subheadings in Arial 12 bold and text in Arial 10 and following style for the references: Lammerts van Bueren ET, Struik PC, van Eekeren N, and Nuijten E (2018). Towards resilience through systems-based plant breeding. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 38(5), [42]. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-018-0522-6
• Ethics and Compliance: Co-authors must agree to the submission and all abstracts must comply with scientific integrity and ethical standards. Include appropriate acknowledgments for funding sources and conflicts of interest.
• In order to submit an abstract, authors need to give their consent for open access publication of the abstract. Publication will take place after the conference.

All abstracts submitted in the required format and within deadline will undergo a peer-review process. They will be reviewed by at least 2 persons of the conference Scientific Committee (SC) The proposed list of selected abstracts will include also a reserve list (in case some authors presenters do not confirm their participation).

Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection of the abstract presentation by beginning of March 2025 by the Convenor of the Scientific Committee. Authors might be requested to make minor changes by the reviewers. Selected authors will be invited to confirm their participation in writing and register to the event. Selected authors have 2 weeks from notification to confirm their participation in writing (by email). Without a written confirmation and registration to the conference, their invitation will be considered as non-accepted. The Scientific Committee Convenor will then proceed to approach authors in the reserve list up to filling available slots.

Any issues related to the selection procedure should be addressed to the Scientific Committee Convenor Mariano Iossa, FiBL Europe.