Peking University Molecular Breeding Academy – Class 2026 open for application

Time: Sept 13-20, 2026

Place: Peking University Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences (PKU-IAAS), No.699 Binhu Road, Xiashan District, Weifang, Shandong, China

Sponsored by

● Peking University School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences (PKU-SAAS)

● Peking University Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences (PKU-IAAS)

Participants and Eligibility

Molecular Breeding Academy is open for scientists, teachers, growers, graduate students, postdocs, and seed industry personals. The participants should meet the following requirements:

● BS degree plus five-year experience, MS degree plus three-year experience, Ph.D. student, or postdocs, in the field of plant breeding.

● The aspirants should be proficient in the following: sending and receiving emails; finding web resources through search engines; downloading and installing software and/or viewing electronic files; familiarity with using browser plug-ins (e. g. PDF reader, video, audio); and using a word processing, presentation software, or other relevant applications.

● Ability of participating intensive learning courses, field trips and tours.

Registration fee

RMB5000 (USD 700) for all participants. These fees include break drinks, course materials, field trips and tours to crop farming and marketing planned for the course. All fees are charged in accordance with the relevant regulations of Peking University's Continuing Education Programs. The tuition fee is collected by Peking University, which will issue a invoice including tax.

Special note: Accommodation, transportation, and meal expenses during the training period are at participants' own expense. The institute offers subsidized room and board at the following rates: single room at 200 RMB/day, double room at 160 RMB/day, and meals at 50 RMB/day. Payment for these expenses is to be made during the training period, and corresponding invoices will be provided.

Lectures/activities and schedule 

Date	Time	Lectures/activities
13 Sept	12:00-22:00	Registration
14 Sept	08:30-09:00	Introduction and welcome
	09:00-12:00	Three special topics on plant breeding
	14:30-17:30	Populations in genetics and breeding
15 Sept	08:30-11:30	Omics and genotyping-phenotyping-envirotyping technologies
	14:30-17:30	Marker-trait association and trait discovery
16 Sept	08:30-11:30	Marker-assisted and genomic-enviromic selection
	14:30-17:30	Plant Breeding Platform and institution tours
17 Sept	08:30-11:30	Genome editing and gene transfer for crop improvement
	14:30-17:30	Climate change and breeding for abiotic and biotic stress tolerance
18 Sept	08:30-11:30	Big data, artificial intelligence and smart breeding
	14:30-17:30	Intellectual property and plant variety protection
	17:30-18:00	Graduation and conclusion
19 Sept	08:30-18:00	Field trips and tours to seed companies and crop farming and marketing
20 Sept	08:30-12:00	Field trips and tours to seed companies and crop farming/marketing; leaving

Instructors 

The courses will be given by instructors from PKU-IAAS/SLAAS, including:

● Dr. Yunbi Xu, senior research professor, PKU-IAAS

https://en.pku-iaas.edu.cn/PI/1287.html

● Dr. Xingping Zhang, Vice Director and senior research professor, PKU-IAAS 

https://en.pku-iaas.edu.cn/PI/1156.html

Certificate IssuanceUpon satisfactory completion of all course requirements (note: this course does not confer any academic degree or diploma), participants will be awarded a Certificate of Completion from Peking University’s Continuing Education Program.

Contact Information

Peking University Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences (PKU-IAAS), 

Email: MBA@pku-iaas.edu.cn

Registration and payment

The registration deadline is Aug 28, 2026.

If you do not have a chinese mobile phone number, please send your CV to MBA@pku-iaas.edu.cn to register.

If you have a chinese mobile phone number, either of the following two registration methods may be used. 

Method 1: Online registration

1.Visit the official website: https://peixun.pku.edu.cn/cms/recruit/index.htm?projectId=ce3e02a6031f4b859617e35fca58dec8 

2.Click on "立即报名(Register Now)".

3.Register using your mobile phone number, log in, and submit your registration information.

4.After successful registration, you will receive a pending review notice. Once your application is approved, you can make the payment online.

Method 2: WeChat registration

1.Follow the official WeChat public account "Peking University Continuing Education北京大学继续教育".

2.Click on "My Account Info".

3.Register using your mobile phone number and log in.

4.After successful registration, return to the homepage and click "Program Registration" → "Register Now".

5.Search for " 北京大学分子育种研修班(MolecularBreedingAcademy)(2026英文班) " and click "Register Now".

6.After successful registration, you will receive a pending review notice. Once your application is approved, you can make the payment via WeChat.

Special note: After submitting your registration, please be sure to send your CV to MBA@pku-iaas.edu.cn for review.

Wire transfer information

The account information for RMB payment via bank transferis as follows:

● Account Name: 北京大学

● Account Number: 0200 0045 0908 9131 151

● Bank Name: 工商银行北京海淀西区支行Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Beijing Haidian West Subbranch

● Bank Address：北京市海淀区北四环西路65号No. 65, North Fourth Ring Road West, Haidian District, Beijing, PRC

● Remittance purpose: In the "Remittance Purpose" field, you must write:" 北京大学分子育种研修班 (MolecularBreedingAcademy) (2026英文班)"

The account information for USD payment via bank transferis as follows:

● Account Name: Peking University

● Account Number: 0200 0045 0908 9131 151

● Bank Name: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Beijing Municipal Branch, Beijing, PRC

● Bank Address：Tianyin Mansion, No.2, Fuxingmen Street(S), Xicheng District, Beijing, PRC

● Swift Code：ICBKCNBJBJM

● Remittance purpose: In the "Remittance Purpose" field, you must write:" 北京大学分子育种研修班 (MolecularBreedingAcademy) (2026英文班)"

About Peking University Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences (PKU-IAAS) 

PKU-IAAS was co-founded by Peking University and Shandong provincial government in 2017, to better serve the needs of rural development and agriculture sustainability in China. The institute takes the advantages of the strong scientific research and educational capabilities of Peking University and close connection with agriculture production and enterprises of Shandong province to become a new international research hub for research and talent development in advanced agriculture sciences (http://en.pku-iaas.edu.cn). The institute is located at the scenic site of Xiashan Ecological and Economic Development Zone, Weifang, Shandong. A well-designed lake-front campus, along with Shandong Laboratory of Advanced Agricultural Sciences in Weifang under construction, can host up to 100 labs and 2,000 researchers, students and visiting scholars. Equipped with state-of-art lab instruments and high-capacity data management super computers and servers, PKU-IAAS will develop as a leading research institute and training center for genetics, agricultural biotechnology, genomics and breeding, agricultural product development, and agricultural policy.

About the Molecular Breeding Academy

Global demand for agriculture products is expected to double by 2050, largely due to improvement in the worldwide standard of living. However, climate change poses a significant threat to agricultural production, impacting biodiversity and crop environments. This Molecular Breeding Academy is specifically designed for personnel in seed industry. It offers a rare opportunity to develop talents and equip conventional breeding to address the challenges of sustainable agricultural production in this Information Age. The Academy focuses on staying up-to-date with current knowledge and technology-driven breeding methods with the purpose of sustainably improving crop productivity. There is growing interest in understanding genetic, genomic and biotechnological tools and integrative strategies for plant breeding, which is driving significant research in this field. Within this complex background, this Academy will provide professional skill-based and knowledge-oriented trainings to the scientists, teachers and graduate students in agriculture; focusing on recent trends in molecular breeding.

Aims & Objectives of Molecular Breeding Academy

● To decipher the basic and molecular, technological advances and know-how on molecular breeding.

● To gain understanding and insights about molecular breeding as a basic tool for crop improvement.

● To gain insights about genetic advances in breeding resistance to disease and pests.

● To grasp the knowledge of basic techniques for building all molecular techniques, new opportunities to enable plant breeding addressing challenges of sustainable crop production in this information age.

● To get inspired from the success journeys of different industrial experts.

● To generate ideas for sustainable crop production by reshaping the future of plant breeding.

Key references 

Books

Xu, Y. 2010. Molecular Plant Breeding. CABI Publisher, Wallingford, UK

Bernardo, R. 2020. Breeding for Quantitative Traits in Plants. 3rd edition, Stemma Press, Woodbury, MN

Liu, X. and Xu, Y. (eds) 2025. Crop Germplasmics. Science Press, Beijing; EDP Science, Les Ulis.

Articles

Gao, C. Genome engineering for crop improvement and future agriculture. Cell 184 (2021) 1621-1635.

Hickey, L.T., A.N. Hafeez, H. Robinson, S.A. Jackson, S.C.M. Leal-Bertioli, M. Tester, C. Gao, I.D. Godwin, B.J. Hayes, B.B.H. Wulff. Breeding crops to feed 10 billion. Nat. Biotechnol. 37 (2019) 744–754.

Resende R.T., L. Hickey, C.H. Amaral, L.L. Peixoto, G.E. Marcatti, Y. Xu. Satellite-enabled enviromics to enhance crop improvement. Molecular Plant. 17 (2024):848–866.

Varshney, R.K., A. Bohra, J. Yu, A. Graner, Q. Zhang, M.E. Sorrells, Designing future crops: Genomics-assisted breeding comes of age, Trends Plant Sci. 26 (2021) 631-649.

Wallace, J.G., E. Rodgers-Melnick, E.S. Buckler. On the road to breeding 4.0: Unraveling the good, the bad, and the boring of crop quantitative genomics. Ann. Rev. Genet. 52 (2018) 421–444.

Xu, Y., X. Zhang, H. Li, H. Zheng, J. Zhang, M.S. Olsen, R.K. Varshney, B.M. Prasanna, Q. Qian, Smart breeding driven by big data, artificial intelligence and integrated genomic-enviromic prediction, Mol. Plant 15 (2022) 1664–1695. 

Xu, Y., P. Li, C. Zou, Y. Lu, C. Xie, X. Zhang, B.M. Prasanna, M.S. Olsen, Enhancing genetic gain in the era of molecular breeding. J. Exp. Bot. 68 (2017) 2641–2666.

Xu, Y., X. Liu, J. Fu, H. Wang, J. Wang, C. Huang, B.M. Prasanna, M.S. Olsen, G. Wang, A. Zhang, Enhancing genetic gain through genomic selection: from livestock to plants. Plant Comm. 1 (2020) 100005.