Plant breeding programs in Soil and Crop Sciences seek to alter the genetic composition of plants to improve crop characteristics. Our plant breeding and genetics faculty members rely on conventional and molecular breeding techniques to modify specific targets such as yield potential, crop quality, biotic and abiotic stress resistance, and/or reduced crop production costs. Breeders of grain crops such as corn, wheat, sorghum, and rice have developed varieties that have improved grain yield, resist diseases and insect pests, resist lodging, and possess improved nutrition or processing quality.
Our faculty have developed genotypes of bioenergy crops such as sweet sorghums, sugar cane, forage sorghums, and perennial grasses with exceptional sugar production per unit land area for ethanol production or biomass for cellulosic ethanol production. Cotton breeders and geneticists in Soil and Crop Sciences have developed unique interspecies lines through hybridization of different species of cotton as well as developed strains with exceptional fiber quality and drought tolerance. Our plant breeding faculty work with sugar cane, rice, cotton, corn, cowpea, wheat, oat, sorghum, perennial grasses, turf grasses, forage legumes, and peanut.
Faculty/Staff
- Michael Baring, peanut, College Station, TX
- Mark Burow, peanut, Lubbock, TX
- John Cason, peanut, Stephenville, TX
- Ambika Chandra, turfgrasses, Dallas, TX
- Jorge DaSilva, sugarcane and bioenergy cane, Weslaco, TX
- Jane Dever, cotton, Lubbock, TX
- Steve Hague, cotton and oilseeds, College Station, TX
- Dirk Hays, wheat, College Station, TX
- Amir Ibrahim, small grains, College Station, TX
- Russell Jessup, perennial grasses, College Station, TX
- Shuyu Liu, wheat, Amarillo, TX
- Seth Murray, corn, College Station, TX
- Bill Rooney, sorghum and bioenergy, College Station, TX
- Jackie Rudd, wheat, Amarillo, TX
- B.B. Singh, cowpeas, College Station, TX
- Ray Smith, legumes, Overton, TX
- Wayne Smith, cotton, College Station, TX
- David Stelly, cotton, College Station, TX
- Shyamal Talukder, rice, Beaumont, TX
- Wenwei Xu, corn, Lubbock, TX
National Association Plant Breeders
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