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Women are historically under-represented in the field of plant breeding, although there is a clear exception to this at the Alliance Bioversity-CIAT (ABC). Alongside Maria Fernanda Alvarez who leads the rice program, female plant breeders lead the forages and bean breeding activities in the respective crop programs. This team of dynamic and inspiring women are delivering improved germplasm to support farmer livelihoods around the world and are also fostering a supportive, collaborative, and equitable environment in which to build the future. It was a real pleasure to interview Maria and I am grateful to her for giving her time during recovery from knee surgery (an occupational hazard of rice breeders). Maria is the Rice Breeding and Genetics Program Leader at ABC, based in Cali, Colombia (https://alliancebioversityciat.org/who-we-are/maria-fernanda-alvarez) and her current role sees her managing day-to-day breeding operations, driving the integration of numerous enabling technologies and interacting with numerous stakeholders and partners.

After the success of the first series of global Women in Crop Science coffee mornings held during September 2022, we organized a second global event series during the week of 20-24th March 2023. This had the same intention: to bring together women working in Crop Science! This time we had 20 hosts from 14 different countries organizing a local event within their organization, institution, or university. This report summarizes some of the discussions and recommendations from the coffee mornings.

The global Women in Crop Science community (https://womenincropscience.org/) aims to raise awareness of female leaders in the crop science community and to showcase their scientific and community contributions. I was inspired to interview Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso as part of the “Women in Crop Science Conversations” interview series because of her inspiring research as well as her passion for supporting diversity and equity in science (and beyond). Yoselin is an Associate Professor in Plant Sciences as well as a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at The University of Leeds in the UK. She leads a team of post-docs, students and visiting scientists working to uncover the mechanisms of plant response to stress. I first met Yoselin a few years ago when I visited The University of Leeds and we have continued to interact regularly both scientifically and as peer mentors. In 2023 Yoselin, along with Nicola Patron (The Earlham Institute) and Steven Spoel (University of Edinburgh) launched the Black in Plant Science UK Network (https://blackinplantscience.org/). This aims to connect, celebrate, and cultivate a community of black plant scientists in the UK. The creation of this network is very much driven by Yoselin’s passionate advocacy for race (as well as gender) equity and for diversifying plant sciences.&nbsp

Our Women in Crop Science community interview series kicks off 2023 with the inspirational Josie Clarke.I was keen to include Josiein our conversation series when I leant about her initiative Ability Agriculture during her recent research exchange to CIMMYT. She has developed and launched this alongside her day job as a PhD student in crop improvement at The University of Sydney, Australia. Ability Agriculture is a pioneering initiative to achieve greater awareness and inclusion for disabled people. The initiative is opening the conversation and giving a voice to highlight that agriculture can be an accessible career option for disabled people. Josie’s vision is that this will showcase the diversity of roles and career pathways available in agriculture that are accessible, as well as allowing the sector to build a more diverse and flexible work force for the future. This will ultimately support and promote the growth and sustainability of rural communities.Josie also hopes that sharing stories will bring greater transparency for accessible development programs and will inspire young people with disabilities into careers in agriculture.

Work and personal life balance is a big challenge for many women working in crop science. Regardless of gender, mentoring is an important resource for scientiststo getinsights and ideas toreach professional goals without sacrificing personal interests. On 9th September 2022, Maria Itria Ibba and Carolina Rivera-Amadoled an open discussion on work-personal life balance and mentoring, with special attention on the experiences of women in crop science.A compilation of comments, positions, ideas and further actions were raised at the meeting and are presented in this article.

During 2022, definition of target market segments for CIMMYT wheat breeding has supported definition of target product profiles for spring, durum and winter wheat. This is based on the Excellence in Breeding Toolbox for “product design and management”. The consolidated information across OneCGIAR crops is available here: https://excellenceinbreeding.org/toolbox/tools/cgiar-seed-product-market-segment-database which also describes the methodology used. Here we provide a summary of and links to the 2022 CIMMYT wheat product profiles for winter, spring, and durum wheat. Input and feedback are welcome to improve the data presented and the targeting of breeding objectives.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UNESCO, 2021) indicates that only 33.3% of researchers around the world are women. As in many other scientific fields, women have braved the male-dominated world and contributed equally to the development of plant breeding. This article was conceptualized as a project from the CIMMYT’s “Basic Wheat Improvement Course 2022” to open the conversation on how the cultural norms and community values had led to a tangible inequality in representation in plant breeding. We also aimed to address ways to deal with these barriers and to continue to encourage and support women in this field. In this report we highlight the findings from a series of interviews with female scientists working in plant breeding and synthesize the recommendations.

The first Women in Crop Science coffee morning was held during the 2021 American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) International Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City in November 2021. With the support of the ASA, CSSA and SSSA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committees we decided to run another event at the meeting in 2022 (https://www.acsmeetings.org/). This built on a year of feedback and further development of Women in Crop Science community (https://womenincropscience.org/). The 2022 event was supported by Corteva, CIMMYT and Oklahoma State University. This report summarizes the event and the outcomes of the discussion topics.

During the week of 5-9th of September 2022, we co-ordinated a Women in Crop Science coffee morning around the world. Hosts from 24 different organizations, institutions and universities organized an event in their local area. The main goal of the coffee mornings was to bring women working in crop science together in an informal setting to spark discussion among peers, to connect women from different career levels and to create networking opportunities. This report summarizes some of the discussions and recommendations from the coffee mornings. Building on the success of the events we are planning the next Global Coffee Morning during the week of 20-24th March 2023.

An objective of the global Women in Crop Science community (https://womenincropscience.org/) is to raise awareness of female leaders in the global crop science community. The recently launched “Women in Crop Science Conversations” interview series was created to provide insight into the lives and work of women who inspire us. The interview format was developed by Julie Van Vlasselaer with inputs from Stéphanie Swarbreck, Laura Dixon and I. Working at CIMMYT, and within the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers (CGIAR) system, the importance of diverse role models in senior leadership plays an important role in ensuring diverse perspectives and views are represented, and in achieving diversity at all levels of the organization. Sonja Vermeulen is the Managing Director of Genetic Innovation in the CGIAR. In this role, she oversees a portfolio of science into application across gene banks, plant breeding and enabling technologies, market intelligence and seed systems. She also provides an example of inclusive and collaborative leadership.

The war in Ukraine has negatively impacted the lives of Ukrainian citizens as well as the livelihoods of nations and people around the world. Shelled fields, seizure or damage to agricultural property and compromise of port infrastructure in Ukraine have destroyed crops, prevented spring planting and are likely to have a major impact on the harvest of 6 million hectares of wheat planted in farmers’ fields across Ukraine. This effects the downstream availability of wheat within Ukraine as well as onward into the global wheat export market. This report was provided as input to the Wheat Initiative July Newsletterandhighlights wheat impacts of the crisis and reflects areas of work required to stabilize future wheat.&nbsp

As part of the recent Global Women in Crop Science coffee events held around the world (https://womenincropscience.org/global-coffee-morning/) an in person event was held at CSIRO, Canberra on Monday 22nd August, 2022 with virtual attendees and a satellite event at CSIRO, Brisbane. The event was hosted by Jessica Hyles, Fernanda Dreccer and Maja Arsic (CSIRO), Caitlin Byrt (Australian National University). The event had 40 in-person attendees, plus 20 online participants. The event included an introductory short talk by Jen Taylor (CSIRO Acting Business Unit Director), Jess Hyles (CSIRO Group Leader, Cotton Biotechnology) and a presentation by Alison Bentley (CIMMYT Global Wheat Program). This was followed by a networking morning tea with discussions and interactions supported by the CSIRO Inclusion and Diversity Initiative. This report summarizes the background and outcomes of the discussion topics.

Heavy summer rains have led to severe floods in Pakistan, affecting over 800,000 hectares of land. Rural areas in the southern coastal provinces have been hardest hit with water levels remaining high throughout the Indus River system. This compounds the existing inequalities in livelihoods and represents significant humanitarian as well as agricultural impacts. Due to flood damage, the estimated direct crop loss by the economists stands around $2.3 billion. Reports indicate that over 32 million people have been displaced by the flooding and urgent humanitarian needs include access to food, water, shelter, and public health. This report highlights the flooding affects on current season crop production andimplications forforward planning of wheat planting. We also highlight the need to take stock of the compounding challenges facing regional as well as global production.&nbsp

We are launching a new Women in Crop Science websitewww.womenincropscience.orgcreated to hostthe Women in Crop Science Directory and toprovidea central resource for information and future training and networking opportunities. We have also created a resource page supporting upcoming Global Women in Crop Science coffee events. This is the result of many interactions and recommendations fromwomen in the global crop science community who we've been consulting in order to identify tangible opportunities to provide greater support and visibility, and to build a stronger global community. Activities to date have included coffee mornings at conferences,regional meetings, topical book reviewsand interviews. An early recommendations was to develop thedirectory providing a central resource of information about women working across the crop sciences globally. This report summarizes the activities to date and gives background on the website, directory and coffee morning series. Wealso welcome further inputs, comments and suggestions from the community.