In the quest to optimize crop productivity across environments, soybean breeders test new cultivars in multiple locations each year. The best-performing cultivars across these locations are selected for further breeding and eventual commercialization.

URBANA, Ill. — A team of animal scientists from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is set to deliver a potential game changer for subsistence farmers in Tanzania: cows that produce up to 20 times the milk of indigenous breeds.     <

As a plant breeder, Milcah Kigoni faces enemies every season. Pests. Disease. Weather. But her most relentless nemesis is time.

New lights in the University of Illinois Plant Care Facilities give her and other researchers leverage to develop better plant varieties faster to help feed the world’s growing population. The drama is real.

URBANA, Ill. – The Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois will host a workshop on applied quantitative genetics for plant breeders June 1-3, 2022. The free workshop will give graduate students and other interested professionals the statistical tools to achieve greater crop breeding outcomes.

URBANA, Ill. – When tar spot – a fungal disease of corn capable of causing significant yield loss – popped out of nowhere in 2015, Midwestern corn growers were left scrambling to manage the outbreak with few effective tools. The industry has since made some progress toward management with fungicides, but many researchers agree resistance is the path forward for living with tar spot.

This week’s 5 Questions Friday features a faculty member in the Department of Crop Sciences. As a small grains breeder, Dr. Jessica Rutkoski goes against the corn-and-beans norm in Illinois to improve important staple crops for societies around the world. 

What motivates you in your work?

URBANA, Ill. – Last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) named soybean breeder Brian Diers one of its 2021 Fellows. The honor recognizes the contributions of researchers for the advancement of science or service to society.

URBANA, Ill. – Wheat and barley growers know the devastating effects of Fusarium head blight, or scab. The widespread fungal disease contaminates grain with toxins that cause illness in livestock and humans, and can render worthless an entire harvest. As Fusarium epidemics began to worsen across the eastern U.S. in the 1990s and beyond, fewer and fewer farmers were willing to risk planting wheat.

URBANA, Ill. – How do you like your rice? Sticky, fluffy, brown, or white? These qualities, in addition to grain length, width, appearance, and other traits, are hugely important predictors of rice sales and consumption worldwide. And region matters. Rice preferences in Latin America, for example, are very different from those in West Africa, Japan, India, and elsewhere.

URBANA, Ill. – What if, in the next five to 10 years, we could double or triple milk and meat availability in developing countries without converting more land to cattle production? Millions of hunger-related deaths and nutritional deficiencies could be prevented, giving farmers and families a real shot at prosperity.