Jülich Plant Science Seminars - Hervé Vanderschuren - "Advancing biotechnology and omics techniques to improve tropical food security crops", KU Leuven, Belgium, 18th of February 2026
Title: Advancing biotechnology and omics techniques to improve tropical food security crops
Speaker: Prof. Hervé Vanderschuren
Affiliation: Tropical Crop Improvement Laboratory, KU Leuven, Belgium
Abstract:
Banana and cassava are two important food security crops in the tropics. Banana also serves as a vital commercial export crop of high economic value and cassava is increasingly used as a key industrial crop for high quality starch production. The triploid nature and sterility of bananas and the high heterozygosity of cassava are both important constraints to their improvement in breeding programs. Consequently, genetic innovation remains scarce, and farmers tend to rely on a limited number of genotypes that are not adapted to changing climatic conditions and emerging pests and diseases. We are taking advantage of the largest world collection of bananas hosted in the Tropical Crop Improvement (TCI) Laboratory at KU Leuven to develop and perform high-throughput screening approaches for the identification of improved traits related to biotic and abiotic stresses as well as plant nutrition. In parallel the TCI Laboratory develops advanced sequencing and bioinformatics pipelines as well as quantitative proteomics and interactomics approaches to study fundamental aspects of tropical crop biology and their responses to pathogens.
For validation of candidate genes and genetic engineering, a high-throughput platform for the genetic transformation of cassava and banana has been established. It includes approaches to generate T-DNA-free edited lines to comply with the incoming European legislation on new genomic techniques (NGTs). In this presentation, you will learn about world banana collection and cryopreservation, methods for virus resistance screening, full-length genome profiling and proteomics of plant DNA viruses, virus-resistant banana, T-DNA-free edited bananas, early bulking cassava, cassava post-harvest physiological deterioration and improved nitrogen cycling for crops.
If you want to meet the speakers during his visit, please contact their host: Uli Schurr (u.schurr@fz-juelich.de).
For participants outside the Forschungszentrum Jülich, please register via email (k.wilms@fz-juelich.de) to obtain access onto the campus.