EVENTS & SEMINARS

2026

2025

2024

2023

The 2023 retreat took place February 22-24, at Steinschalerhof in Rabenstein an der Pielach, in the so called “Drindl-Valley”. Dirndl is the local name for Cornelian cherry dogwood (Cornus mas) which is a traditional and popular fruit tree in this region, with beautiful yellow flowers in early spring and read cherry-like fruits in autumn.

We are grateful to Prof. Jochen Reif (IPK Gatersleben) and Prof. Ino Curik (University of Zagreb) for joining us as external advisors and sharing their expertise with us.

We explored with different communication settings including regular presentation talks, chalk talks and a test-defensio. We also found it very inspiring to discuss each project in a world-cafe setting in small groups.

And it was great fun to learn more about Cornus mas, beavers in the Pielach valley, and during an evening quiz.

Ino Curik

The AgriGenomics retreat in February 2023 was excellently organised and had very good accommodations. Even more important were the excellent presentations and their scientific quality. I enjoyed it very much. 

AgriGenomics seminars 

2026

23.04.2026 

Speaker: Priv. Doz. Dr. Barbara Wallner,  University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Talk: The history of horse breeding through the lens of the Y chromosome

21.05.2026 

Speaker: Dr. Judith Himmelbauer,  Rinderzucht Austria / ZuchtData

Talk: Single-step genomic evaluation in cattle

11.06.2026 

Speaker: Core Facility Bioinformatics, BOKU Vienna

Talk: Connecting Omics to AgriGenomics: Services for Researchers

18.06.2026 

Speaker: Priv.-Doz. Dr. Pamela Burger, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Talk: Genomic tools for conserving biodiversity 

2025

09.01.2025 

Speaker: Prof. Henryk Flachowsky, Julius Kühn-Institut Institut für Züchtungsforschung an Obst, Dresden/Pillnitz

Talk: Status, difficulties and perspectives of Pillnitz breeding research on the adaptation of apples to climate change

27.02.2025 

Speaker: Óscar Vicente; University of Valencia

Talk: Biotechnological strategies to improve crop adaptation to climate change effects

13.03.2025 

Speaker: Dr. Carmen Escudero-Martinez, University of Dundee, UK

Talk: Identifying and validating plant genes shaping microbiota composition in the barley rhizosphere

10.04.2025 

Speaker: Dr. Markus Dobersberger, BOKU

Talk: Introduction to the BOKU core facilities

15.05.2025 

Speaker: Prof. Eva Stöger, BOKU

Talk: Getting to know your faculty neighbors: Optimizing plants to enhance their efficiency as production hosts for recombinant proteins

12.06.2025 

Speaker: Prof. Paul Christou, University of Leida, Spain

Talk: From single transgenes to pathway engineering and genome editing: a personal account of plant genetic engineering andbiotechnology from 1980 to 2024 and beyond

15.10.2025 

Speaker: Prof. Sergio Tombesi, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Itlay

Talk: Night temperature effects on grapevine physiology

15.10.2025 

Speaker: Kristina Margaryan, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia

Talk: Vine biodiversity and recent activities in Armenia

16.10.2025 

Speaker: Prof. Xiaoqi Feng, ISTA Klosterneuburg

Talk: Epigenetic Reprogramming in Plant Germlines

20.11.2025 

Speaker: Prof. Steven Runo, Kenyatta University Nairobi, Kenya

Talk: Genomic insights into a parasitic plant (Striga) and sorghum  arms race

15.12.2025 

Speaker: Dr. Tomas Matus, Institute of Integrative Systems Biology Valencia, Spain

Talk: A systems biology framework to identify novel molecular targets in grape-pathogen interactions: from networks to genome-wide TF binding assays and omics visualization platforms 

2024

18.01.2024 

Speaker: Prof. Steven Maenhout, Univ. Ghent, Belgium

Talk: GWAS: the unexpected return of the linear model

12.03.2024 

Speaker: Dr. Farai Muchadeyi, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna

Talk: IAEA/FAO joint division on animal production and health: Projects on animal breeding and genomics

20.06.2024 

Speaker: Dr. Tad Sonstegard, Acceligen Inc., U.S.A.

Talk: Cattle Breeding for the Tropics with Adaptive Genetics

17.10.2024 

Speaker: Prof. Christian Luschnig, BOKU

Talk: Getting to know your faculty neighbors: Exploiting cellular sorting mechanisms to learn about fundamental principles of plant adaptation

28.11.2024 

Speaker: Dr. Theresa Scharl-Hirsch, BOKU

Talk: Clustering Three-Way RNA Sequencing Data

12.12.2024 

Speaker: PD Dr. Eva Oburger, BOKU

Talk: Root and rhizosphere traits in sustainable agriculture 

2023

12.01.2023

Speaker: Antonio Di Pietro, University of Córdoba

Talk: Adaptation strategies in a clonally evolving fungal pathogen

30.03.2023 

Speaker: Prof. Oliver Fiehn, PhD, UC Davis Genome Center - Metabolomics, California, USA

Talk: Space Odyssey 2023: metabolism in the human small intestine

18.04.2023 

Speaker : Priv.-Doz. Mag. Dr. Ulrike Grienke University of Vienna, Division of Pharmacognosy, Vienna, Austria

Talk: Introduction to biochemometrics research by the use of NMR-based tools

16.05.2023 

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Nicola Zamboni, ETH Zürich, Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, Zürich, Switzerland

Talk: Introduction to mass spectrometry based metabolomics and bioinformatics, and research at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology

15.06.2023 

Speaker: Prof.Dr. Martina Marchetti-Deschmann, TU Vienna, Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Research Group Mass Spectrometric Bio and Polymer Analysis Austria

Talk: MALDI-Mass Spectrometry Imaging in Metabolomics

19.10.2023 

Speaker: Mark McMullan, Earlham Institute (Norwich, UK)

Talk: Crop wild relatives to investigate plant& pathogen co-evolution

23.11.2023 

Speaker: Mark Varrelmann, Institute of Sugar Beet Research (Göttingen, Germany)

Talk: Sugar beet phytopathology, from disease diagnosis to genomics

13.12.2023 

Speaker: Prof. Rainer Hofmann, Lincoln Univesity, New Zealand

Talk: Harnessing the diversity in plants for a changing world

14.12.2023 

Speaker: Prof. Kai Voss-Fels, Department of Grapevine Breeding, Geisenheim University, Germany

Talk: Genetic algortihm guided allele stacking to develop high-yielding, resistant varieties

2022

20.01.2022

Speaker: Kelly Swarts, Gregor Mendel Institut, Vienna, Austria

Talk: Tree-ring genomics for understanding responses to changing climate 

06.10.2022

Speaker: Holger Puchta, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Talk: Applying CRISPR/Cas to plants: From Gene Editing to Chromosome and Tissue Engineering

03.11.2022

Speaker: Zachary Lewis, University of Georgia (UGA)

Talk: Assembly and function of silent chromatin in Neurospora crassa: new insights into the Polycomb Repression Network

01.12.2022

Speaker: Sónia Negrão, University College Dublin, Ireland

Talk: Unlocking the genetic potential of heritage barley to improve waterlogging tolerance using high-throughput phenotyping

AgriGenomis Annual Retreat

Nathaniel Street

The retreat was an excellent opportunity to meet and interact with both the PhD students and their advisors to discuss their research and wider issues such as future career plans. The retreat was well structured to include scientific presentations with feedback and discussion follow ups as well as social interaction. The retreat location and facilities were perfect to be able to focus on the retreat activities away from daily work. One thing I particularly values were the discussions after the presentations.

2021

AgriGenomics seminars

16.12.2021

Speaker: Matteo Dell’Acqua, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy

Talk: Data-driven, genomics-enabled participatory methods to support breeding for challenging cropping environments: the case of durum wheat in Ethiopia

11.11.2021

Speaker: Sanu Arora, John Innes Centre Norwich, UK

Talk: Improving plant health for sustainable agriculture

21.10.2021

Speaker: Jochen Christoph Reif, IPK Gatersleben, Germany

Talk: Innovations driving the improvement of crops

17.06.2021

Speaker: Peter F. Stadler, University of Leipzig, Germany

Talk: Reconstructing Transcripts Accurately: Complex Loci and the Evolution of long non-coding RNAs

22.04.2021

Speaker: Matthew D. Clark Research Leader Department of Lifesciences, Natural History Museum, UK

Talk: Combining genome technologies with genetics to analyse MAGIC populations

25.02.2021

Speaker: Mitch McGrath, Michigan State University, USA

Talk: Sugar beet genomics in the breeding age

21.01.2021

Speaker: Ric de Vos, Wageningen University and Research Centre, The Netherlands

Talk: Metabolomics: a versatile tool in agro-genomic research

08.01.2021

Speaker: Gaud Dervilly, Laboratoire d’Etude des Résidus et Contaminants dans les Aliments, Nantes, France 

Talk: Metabolomics in chemical risk analysis

AgriGenomis Annual Retreat

Isolated from the distractions of everyday administrative life, project leaders and PhD students of the interdisciplinary BOKU Doc-School AgriGenomics finally met again "live" for their annual retreat.  In the tranquil ambience of the turn-of-the-century styled "Hotel Marienhof" in Reichenau an der Rax, students from six departments spent two days presenting project progress and discussing ideas, problems and future plans in detail. Typical "Agri": the excursion to the Alpaca farm including discussions about pedigree, husbandry and breeding.  And a (supposedly calming) Alpaca walk into the surrounding forests.

Impressions of PhD students from the AgriGenomics DocSchool-Retreat 2021

After a time of online seminars, virtual conferences and countless Zoom-meetings, the first “post-COVID” AgriGenomics retreat was taking place in physical presence in an atmosphere of excitement, elation and long-desired personal reunion. As the DocSchool is approaching its second birthday, the number of students but also of the PIs attending the retreat had considerably increased compared to the first event. Therefore, especially the first day was an entertaining mixture of listening to scientific presentations of PhD-projects and trying to get to know as many new people as possible while also catching up on the stories of “old” colleagues. The highly interdisciplinary AgriGenomics DocSchool unites students and PIs of quite diverse research groups, always challenging its members to leave their own scientific comfort-zone and get involved with topics in the broader context of genomics in agricultural sciences. That this challenge was readily accepted could be seen in the lively discussions following individual presentations, sometimes in turn challenging the tight time schedule.

Nevertheless, the whole group managed to be on time for an excursion to some very peculiar, very adorable and also very stubborn subjects of agricultural business: the so-called Rax-Alpakas at the farm of Doris and Mario Siwatz. By producing strange sounds and being incredibly fluffy, these animals quickly made their way into the hearts of most AgriGenomics-people during a short stroll near the farm. It seemed that conversations flowed even more easily across the woolly backs of stubborn Alpakas not really willing to walk the same way as their human guides. In consequence, chats about everything from journal publications to research stays, favorite recipes or film recommendations kept going on all through the visit at a “Most-Heurigen”, dinner and far into the night.

Students presenting on the second day of the retreat were probably a little afraid that they would struggle to compete with all these nice memories created the day before – fortunately, both students and PIs were still open to explore even more aspects of the four AgriGenomics pillars bioinformatics/statistics, diversity and selection, functional genomics as well as epi-, meta- and proteomics. The afternoon-discussions within both the student- and PI-group clearly showed that the DocSchool is full of enthusiastic people aiming to become an even better-connected interdisciplinary group and ready to embark on new tasks. One of these will be to adequately celebrate several anniversaries in the coming year: 150 years of BOKU, the 200^th birthday of genetics pioneer Gregor Mendel and 3 years of AgriGenomics doctoral school!

With such good prospects, the official part of the 2^nd AgriGenomics retreat in Reichenau an der Rax had come to an end. While some made their way home, several students and PIs extended the experience even a little longer: led by AgriGenomics-coordinator Hermann Bürstmayr, 15 members of the DocSchool invested an extra day to explore the beautiful Viennese Alps with a hike to the “Ameisbühel”. Climbing steep slopes and walking across pastoral plains near the mountain top, the AgriGenomics-group transformed into a sports team, passing roughly 1100 meters of altitude and being rewarded with cold drinks and fresh food at a mountain farm and of course a magnificent view from the peak of the “Ameisbühel”. This can be seen as a metaphore for the DocSchool: we tackle challenges as a group, help and motivate each other and manage to see things from a different perspective to successfully achieve our goals. Many thanks to everyone who helped making this experience possible, especially Christa Jakopitsch from the DocService and our coordinator Hermann Bürstmayr!

2020

AgriGenomics seminars

11.12.2020

Speaker: Coral Barbas, San Pablo CEU University, Madrid, Spain

Talk: Unveiling metabolic changes affecting the brain slices used for electrophysiological recordings through a multiplatform metabolomics approach

19.11.2020

Speaker: Wolfram Weckwerth, University of Vienna, Austria

Talk: From Metabolomics to biochemical network modelling for the characterization of germplasm collections

18.06.2020

Speaker: Hans Lenstra, Utrecht University

Talk: Molecular tools and analytical approaches for the characterization of farm animal genetic diversity

14.05.2020

Speaker: Tosso Leeb, University of Bern, Switzerland

Talk: Genomic solutions for Mendelian traits

30.04.2020

Speaker: Hermann Schwarzenbacher, ZuchtData GmbH, Vienna, Austria

Talk: Cattle breeding in Austria using genomic selection

16.01.2020

Speaker: Marc-Henri Leburn, INRAE, Université Paris-Saclay, France

Talk: The use of transposon mutagenesis and engineering in genetic analysis of the wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici

AgriGenomics Annual Retreat

The first AgriGenomics Annual Retreat was held from February 19-20 in Hotel Schneeberghof in Lower Austria. All doctoral candidates gave oral presentations, introducing their doctoral project to all AgriGenomics members. In addition, poster sessions were held to increase the individual feedbacks for studens. Importantly, discussion rounds with the doctoral candidates were held to shape the DocSchool according to their needs.

As a social activity team ice curling was organized to intensify personal contacts and to allow for more informal discussions between faculty and students.

2019

AgriGenomics seminars

12.12.2019

Speaker: Klaus Mayer, Technical University Munich, Germany

Talk: The genomes of human civilisation(s)