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2026 Soybean Breeders' Workshop
Workshop Details

February 16 - 18, 2026

Hilton St. Louis Frontenac

1335 S Lindbergh Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63131

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Phenotypic Plasticity and Genotype-by-Environment Interaction: Dissection and Prediction

Phenotypic plasticity is the property of a given genotype to produce different phenotypes in response to distinct environmental conditions. Different phenotypic plasticity across a set of genotypes gives rise to varied phenotypic values, the variation of which is typically partitioned into genotype, environment, genotype-by-environment interaction, and residual. Although various methods have been developed, many of these methods lack forecasting capacity and our understanding of genomic and environmental determinants is still limited. Recently, an integrated analytical framework was developed to answer long-standing questions in phenotypic plasticity and genotype-by-environment interaction. The essence is to combine knowledge from physiology, genetics, and statistics to identify the major environmental pattern rather than focus on exhaustive model fitting to the available data from the set of environments. Uncovered patterns and biological insights are then leveraged for performance forecasting and visualization of the gene effect continuum.

In this workshop, we plan to

  • Help you establish a better understanding of phenotypic plasticity and explain two different origins of genotype-by-environment interaction, and the common confusion about this term.
  • Practice an open-source CERIS-JGRA package designed to facilitate the research community to dissect and predict quantitative traits.
  • Showcase the analytical method in identifying genomic and environmental determinants underlying phenotypic plasticity of several agronomically important traits in different crops.

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