The Illini Pullers, a registered student organization at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has received a generous donation of software from Simma Software, Inc. to help the student team build safer, more advanced tractors for competition and learning.

When Chris Mujjabi found an envelope marked ‘Kitale Synthetic’ in a cold storage room at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the corn breeder knew he had stumbled on something special. He had gone looking for exotic germplasm that could improve yield or weed tolerance in his latest organic hybrids, but instead he found a connection to his past and his community.

 The U.S. has traditionally been an agricultural powerhouse with a healthy trade surplus. But global dynamics are changing due to a confluence of political and economic factors. U.S. agricultural imports now exceed exports, and the trade deficit is projected to worsen in the coming years.

The ripple effects of increased tariffs under President Trump could extend to the $117 billion U.S. beer market, according to new research from a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign agricultural economist who studies food supply chains.

This year, Champaign County 4-H’er Austin Ater celebrated his 14th birthday in an extraordinary way — by giving back. The 2025 Illinois State Fair junior grand champion poultry exhibitor donated his record-setting winning pen of chickens to help fight hunger in the community.

If you ate, filled your gas tank, took medicine, or did laundry today, you likely participated in the bioeconomy. That’s the part of the economy that taps as its source material living, growing things. With great potential to reduce waste, grow markets for farmers, and create new jobs, the bioeconomy depends on biotechnology innovations and all the processes and policies required to get those products to your local superstore, pharmacy, grocery store, gas pump, or agricultural supplier. 

Darin Joos, Crop Sciences Research Agronomist, has been named a 2025 Chancellor’s Staff Excellence Award recipient.

Joos began his Illinois career in 1994 as a graduate student and went on to lead the state’s crop variety testing program, which evaluated commercial varieties of corn, wheat, and soybean at 14 sites across Illinois. After nearly three decades in that role, he now manages the Crop Sciences Research and Education Center farms in Champaign.