Illumina innovations shaping crop genomics today, and driving tomorrow’s breakthroughs

While traditional phenotypic selection has driven agricultural success for generations, overcoming modern climate and food sustainability pressures demands a transition into the precision breeding era. Standard genomic selection relies heavily on single reference genomes, which fail to capture critical genetic diversity or complex environmental interactions across entire populations.  

In this on-demand webinar, Andre Eggen outlines how Illumina is removing historical workflow constraints to make multiomics more accessible, scalable, and powerful.  

Discover how moving beyond single reference genomes to population-scale pangenomics, high-throughput epigenetics, single-cell analysis, and spatial transcriptomics empowers researchers to unlock deeper biological insights and develop resilient, climate-adapted crops. 

What you’ll learn

• Pangenomic selection: Discover how sequence-based pangenomes can reveal genetic diversity linked to disease resistance and stress tolerance. 
• Scaling genotyping capacity: Learn how higher-density microarrays can double sample capacity per run, helping streamline workflows and lower costs for large-scale breeding programmes. 
• Simultaneous genetic and epigenetic profiling: Explore how 5-base sequencing can support variant calling and methylation profiling from a single read. 
• Resolving cellular heterogeneity: See how single-cell approaches can reveal rare cell types and regulatory insights missed by bulk sequencing. 
• Spatial transcriptomics and phase assembly: Understand how spatial and proximity-based approaches can support population-scale crop pangenome construction. 

Who Should Attend?

• Plant breeders looking to improve prediction accuracy and accelerate genetic gain.  
• Agrigenomics researchers, molecular biologists & bioinformaticians exploring pangenomics and multiomic integration.  
• Crop science professionals managing commercial crop propagation and early trait screening. 

Featured Speaker

André Eggen, PhD
Director, Global Agrigenomics
Illumina