AAB Presidents Meeting: Cereal Quality for sustainable production and human health

We are delighted to introduce the 2024 AAB Presidential Meeting led by Professor Mike Gooding, who for the past three decades has supported sustainable cereal production through improving quality, resource use-efficiency, and climate-change adaptation.

The human population is heavily reliant on the cereals for food security. Indeed, production of the most popular cereals has outstripped that of population growth over the last 60 years. This remarkable achievement is, in part, testament to scientific and technological advances in crop improvement, nutrition, and protection, and the efforts of farmers, agronomists, and processors. However, there is growing concern as to the effect of the quantity of certain cereal products in the human diet on health. These concerns need to be set against recognised health benefits, and the contribution that increased production has for global food security in times of political upheaval and climate change.

In addition to improving human health, attempts to meet processor and consumer expectations is key to sustaining food chains. Achieving quality criteria, however, often demands special attention to the selection of genotypes, agronomy, and cropping system; while success is also often heavily dependent on soils, weather, and climate. Growing crops for specific markets have, therefore, implications for the efficient use of land and other resources, whilst environmental change will undoubtedly affect the reliability of meeting quality standards.

It is timely that AAB returns to the subject of Cereal Quality. We invite contributions that seek to increase sustainability; through improved understanding and innovation related to environmental, genetic, agronomic, and processing effects on cereal quality and human health. We also welcome systems orientated contributions: more needs to be known concerning the effects on crop quality of systems protecting the soil, and mitigation / adaptation of effects of climate change such as regenerative- , conservation-, and climate-smart agriculture.

This meeting is co-organised by the AAB Plant Physiology and Crop Improvement group and will include awards of AAB Presidents Medals.