This episode is part of a series featuring recipients of the Jeanie Borlaug Laube Women in Triticum (WIT) award program from the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative. The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative is an international consortium based at Cornell University dedicated to Norman Borlaug’s vision of fostering a new generation of hunger fighters. This series highlight the journeys and accomplishments of five WIT awardees in the world of wheat science. We really want to thank the amazing Maricelis Acevedo, that is the associate director for science and a 2010 WIT winner, for the support in making this series possible.

Dr Anna Backhaus is working on pre-breeding for cereals at ICARDA. Her work focuses on accelerating the identification and introgression of useful gene bank material. She also focuses on using the diversity in the more distal crop wild relatives (CWR) of wheat and barley. These are difficult to assess, and crossing barriers are in the way. However, CWR introgressions have shown great potential in breeding for dry areas. She believes germplasm diversity, but equally in the workplace, will be essential for future crop improvement. Furthermore, She is keen to advance the application and use of next-generation sequencing data in breeding and pre-breeding.