Guest Speaker Wolfgang Busch, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, Salk Institute. Dr. Busch’s work focuses on understanding which genes, genetic networks, and molecular processes determine root phenotypes. For this, his laboratory exploits natural genetic variation in the model plant Arabidopsis and uses a systems genetics approach that combines large-scale phenotyping, genome wide association studies, genetics, and genomics to find and characterize genes, their alleles, and the genetic networks that ultimately determine root growth. Overview The world is at a crossroads: The human population has and is continuing to expand to levels that depletes the earth’s resources at an unprecedented rate and require enormous amounts of foods. At the same time, human activities lead to a steady net increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere, thereby causing significant changes of the earth’s climate. This will make it even harder to produce sufficient food for the human population, as the severity and frequency of weather extremes already leads to decreased crop yields. Mitigation of climate change is therefore of utmost importance to prevent global catastrophe and human suffering at an unseen scale in the not so far future.