“Breeding Focus 2018 - Reducing Heat Stress” is the third workshop in the series. The Breeding Focus series was developed to provide an opportunity for exchange between industry and research across a number of agricultural industry sectors. With this goal in mind, workshops have included presentations across the livestock and aquaculture industries to take participants outside their area of expertise and encouraged them to think outside the box. This year we increased the scope even further by also inviting presentations from the cropping and horticulture industries. Since the topic of heat stress has recently gained increased attention, we will discuss a wide range of aspects associated with heat stress, such as the physiology of heat stress and phenotypic indicators, genetic approaches and industry impacts.