The ASPB Innovation Prize for Agricultural Technology

2025 Winners: Marc Albertsen, Manjit Singh, and Mark Williams

This award is given for the work of a mature team led by a senior expert in reproductive biology with a specific interest in enabling hybrid wheat. The team, comprising Corteva agriscience researchers Marc Albertsen, Mark Williams, and Manjit Singh, took innovative steps to develop a hybridization platform for wheat that is superior to available platforms. They combined new gene editing technology with their earlier cloning of the first male fertility gene in a crop plant to show that this gene had the potential to address limitations in currently available wheat hybridization platforms. The innovative use of state-of-the-art technology, combined with classical genetic approaches, resulted in a platform that simplifies the production of parental lines by enabling reliable seed sorting of male-sterile and male-fertile segregants in any wheat background. This marks a crucial step-change in hybridization and will deliver a new baseline for future growth in wheat yield and productivity. Particularly impressive is the lead applicant’s current commitment to philanthropic applications of this technology, including crop production in Africa where the advantages of hybrid seed are desperately needed. The potential to apply similar technology to other crops is particularly exciting. The achievements of this team have been underpinned by scientific innovation with broad applicability to plant biology, plant breeding, and innovation in agriculture.