- Soybean Breeding – Develop soybean varieties with high yield, enhanced quality, disease and pest resistance, and herbicide tolerance
- Increasing soybean yield with exotic germplasm:
- Identify and utilize soybean genetic diversity for germplasm enhancement;
- Map yield QTL and introgress them into elite soybean germplasm lines
- Drought, heat, and flood tolerant varieties for the Midwest and South: Building on success:
- Map QTL for drought tolerance
- Breeding for drought tolerance
- High oleic soybean breeding – Develop soybean cultivars with high oleic and low linolenic acid contents
- Development of high yielding soybean cultivars and germplasm with higher seed protein content and improved amino acid composition
- Identification and utilization of resistance to soybean rust:
- Evaluate soybean lines for rust resistance
- Identify novel rust resistance loci
- Discovery of novel nematode resistance genes and development of productive soybeans with multiple-nematode resistance
- Soybean insect resistance – Identify and determine the function of insect-resistance genes in soybean, and deploy them in elite soybean varieties
- Genome-wide association studies for traits of interest
- Genomic selection for improving soybean yield
Teaching
Quantitative Aspects of Plant Breeding, PBGG (CRSS) 8880, Spring Semester, Even Years