This course will expose students to the achievements of plant breeding efforts from several countries and crops; discover the genetic basis of crop plant phenotypes; explore the wild and domesticated ancestors of our modern field crops as well as fruit and vegetable crops; design improvement strategies for self-pollinating, cross-pollinating and asexually propagated crops; run, work in a successful crop breeding program; develop molecular tools that will directly assist in the crop breeding process; formulate conservation strategies of the world's crop biodiversity through gene/germplasm banks.