WSCSE-2025

Roberto Tuberosa joined the Department of Agronomy at the University of Bologna in 1977 and subsequently pursued a PhD in Plant Breeding at the University of Minnesota. After returning to Italy, he pioneered biotechnology in wheat, barley and maize at the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Bologna, where he managed the cereal genomics laboratory to map and clone major genes/QTLs for flowering time, disease resistance and root architecture in wheat and maize. He teaches Plant Genetics, Plant Biotechnology and Plant Breeding, mentored 28 graduate students and supervised visitors from 14 countries. He is a CSSA Fellow, Distinguished Alumni of the University of Minnesota and Board member of the Wheat Initiative. He represents Europe in the International Crop Science Society (ICSS) and collaborates with seed companies to improve durum wheat and maize via marker-assisted selection and gene editing. He cloned and patented two maize QTLs: Vgt1 for flowering time and Root-yield 1.06 for root mass and yield. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Section of Plant Genetics and Genomics of ‘Genes’ and has a Google Scholar H-Index of 72. He coordinates 31 partners in the PanWheatGrain project (2021-2026) to assemble the durum wheat pangenome to better leverage the tetraploid wheat QTLome and haplotypes for selecting bread wheat more resilient to the adverse effects of climate change. He organized 11 congresses, including four editions of From Seed to Pasta (FSTP) and will chair FSTP5 (www.fromseedtopasta.com/scientific-program) in September 2025 and the 4th International Wheat Congress (www.wheatinitiative.org/international-wheat-congress) in May 2026 in Bologna.