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Seed World

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Seed World episodes

  • Designer Crops on Demand: Risk-managed trait development – A Seed World Innovation Webinar & Podcast
    About The Webinar In this webinar, Platform Genetics will present end-to-end solutions for mutation-based trait development.​​​​​​​In this webinar, you’ll learn: If you’d like to reach out to Platform Genetics to learn more about the presentation, please reach out to [email protected] to schedule an introductory chat, and follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn @PlatformGen. Stay up to date […]
    49 min
  • McKena Lipham Wants You to Know About Teff

    Before Seed World‘s Marc Zienkiewiz sat down with her at the annual meeting of the National Association of Plant Breeders in Ames, Iowa, last month, he’d never heard of teff. Lipham specializes in the underutilized cereal crop that is actually consumed by a whopping 90 million people, mostly on the African continent.

    Lipham is a Ph.D student working in the horticulture department at Michigan State University (MSU). She received her B.S. in Applied Biotechnology from the University of Georgia before moving to MSU to pursue a Ph.D in horticulture and plant breeding. Her dissertation is focused on the discovery of agronomic, domestication, and climate resilience traits in teff. She aims to explore the untapped genetic diversity of crops that are often globally neglected and highlight their potential as more sustainable, agrobiodiverse alternatives. 

    “It’s an Ethiopian grain and it is very culturally and economically important in Ethiopia, Eritrea and other places around the world, but most important in Ethiopia. For my research, I’m interested in characterizing a couple of different traits, but really just providing some molecular markers, some resources for future breeding material in teff,” she says.

    The post McKena Lipham Wants You to Know About Teff appeared first on Seed World.

    0 min
  • Can Weather Predict Soybean Traits? Liza Van der Laan Thinks So

    Liza Van der Laan works on breeding high yield-high protein soybeans and using machine learning methods to understand how weather affects these traits and can be used to predict these traits. She’s a Ph.D student at Iowa State University and is a member of the Soynomics Research and Breeding Group.

    She sat down with Marc Zienkiewicz in Ames, Iowa, last month at the National Association of Plant Breeders annual meeting to discuss her work, which also centers around developing tools to breed more climate-resilient soybeans, specifically to heat stress.

    “We are trying to see if there are certain weather variables that really seem to be controlling the outcome at the end of the season. Are there certain weather parameters that are more important in other weeks of development than there are other times?” she says. “We have harvest dates, so we theoretically know approximately what stage the plant should be in. So it could be say, at 10 weeks after planting, the rainfall was very important for protein yield. We’re really trying to see what the parameters are that could potentially be affecting that.”

    Van der Laan is also an active student in the Department of Agronomy at ISU, holding a leadership position in the Agronomy Graduate Student Club. Additionally, she has been on the planning committee multiple times for the RF Baker Plant Breeding Symposium.

    The post Can Weather Predict Soybean Traits? Liza Van der Laan Thinks So appeared first on Seed World.

    0 min
  • For Luis Salazar, a Love of Plant Breeding Began at Hobby Lobby
    Luis Salazar’s career in plant breeding began at a craft store. “Back in the day, when I was about 11, my family and I were at a Hobby Lobby. I found a growing kit for carnivorous plants. The North American species of carnivorous plants, most of them require something called stratification for the seeds, where […]
    12 min
  • Mary-Francis LaPorte is all About the Data
    For Mary-Francis LaPorte, the world of computers is like a playground. LaPorte is a third-year Ph.D Candidate at the University of California Davis. She works in Dr. Christine Diepenbrock’s lab, studying genomic prediction of carotenoid traits in tropical and subtropical maize grain. Prior to graduate school, she studied plant biology at the University of Oklahoma. […]
    10 min
  • How the Night Sky Helped Emmanuel Gonzalez Love Plant Breeding
    When Emmanuel Gonzalez was a kid growing up in El Centro, CA, he developed an interest in both astronomy. Who knew looking up at the stars would lead to a fascination with plants. He decided to pursue his interest in plants by earning a BS in Biology with an emphasis in plant biology from Pacific […]
    14 min
  • Mitchell Kent Makes a Sorghum Discovery
    Did you know waxy sorghum can weather in the field faster than its non-waxy counterpart? Turns out that might not be true after all. Mitchell Kent grew up in central Illinois where he received a bachelor’s degree in crop science from the University of Illinois. Mitchell then moved to Texas where he received a master’s […]
    6 min