Don’t Break What Works, Says World Agriculture Prize Winner

Fresh off receiving the 2026 World Agriculture Prize, wheat geneticist Jorge Dubcovsky explains why he’s so confident in public breeding, and what he fears could put its success at risk.

Jorge Dubcovsky has won the 2026 World Agriculture Prize for a career that has helped transform wheat genetics, train generations of plant breeders and demonstrate what sustained investment in public agricultural research can accomplish.

The University of California, Davis geneticist received the $100,000 international honor at Nanjing Agricultural University in China on Oct. 28. Presented by the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for the Agricultural and Life Sciences (GCHERA), the prize recognizes lifetime achievements in agricultural research, education, innovation and societal impact.

He previously received the prestigious Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 2013 but sees this recognition as broader.

“The other was more scientific discovery impact,” he says. “This one has that component, but also it’s from an association of universities, so it has a component of education.”

That recognition comes as Dubcovsky questions the future of programs that helped make his work possible.

What Public Breeding Can Deliver

Over 35 years, Dubcovsky has helped identify genes involved in wheat yield, flowering time, nutrient efficiency, disease resistance and grain quality. His discoveries have contributed to varieties grown across millions of hectares worldwide.

During California’s stripe rust epidemic in the early 2000s, new pathogen races overcame resistance in existing varieties, causing yield losses of approximately 25% even with fungicide applications.

Dubcovsky’s team identified resistance genes, developed molecular markers and combined the genes to improve durability. Within a handful of years, resistant varieties were reaching growers through public and private breeding programs.

“They saw firsthand that technology that we were offering was not a blue-sky technology, but something that can solve their problems,” he says.

That experience reinforced the value of a system in which growers fund research through checkoff, USDA supports scientific innovation, and universities provide expertise and infrastructure. Public breeders share genetic advances with commercial seed companies, which incorporate them into their own varieties.

“I would say that the system that we have is really working super well,” he says.

The People Who Make the System Work

Dubcovsky says the highlight of receiving the award was seeing 11 former students, who travelled from across China to attend the ceremony. Several now lead major research laboratories; two are university deans.

“This award, at the end, celebrates work that I organize, but it’s the work of other people,” he says.

His former students work across South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States, reflecting decades of international scientific exchange.

“The U.S. has been a magnet to attract the best people all over the world,” he says. “Having the human capital that the U.S. had in the past, attracting everybody from every part of the world, was brilliant.”

He worries increasing barriers and a less welcoming political environment are eroding that advantage.

“Now we are making life difficult for people who want to come, and there are a lot of people who don’t want to come to the U.S. anymore,” he says.

Maintaining opportunities also means sustaining the institutions where scientists train.

For 25 years, Dubcovsky has helped coordinate WheatCAP, a collaborative initiative connecting public wheat breeding programs across the United States. The initiative allows programs to share research infrastructure, avoid duplicating efforts and provide graduate students with hands-on breeding experience.

Its collaborative funding is scheduled to end in December without renewal, which Dubcovsky says will force programs back to competing individually for research grants.

He acknowledges that individual grants can encourage innovation, but believes collaborative programs deliver benefits that are difficult to replicate.

“I think that you need to find a mixture of the two types of programs,” he says.

The stakes extend beyond wheat. Dubcovsky has watched university breeding programs disappear across multiple crops, raising a question the profession’s future.

“Who will train the plant breeders if you don’t have any breeding programs in the universities?” Dubcovsky asks.