Blog - Page 10 of 15 - Department of Agronomy

Alum finds purpose in Senegal after joining the Peace Corp

After graduating Iowa State in 2018, Erik Endacott worked seasonal jobs across the West Coast before the Peace Corps changed the direction of his life.

“Unfortunately, after only 6 months the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and I was sent home along with all 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers around the world,” said Erik.

He took a job as a soil conservation technician in Roseau, Minnesota. Months went by and what he started in Senegal never left him. In May of 2021 he returned on his own to finish his Peace Corps projects. He met Mamadou Babacar Diop after arriving. Mamadou had started Volunteer Network for a Green and Prosperous Sahel (VNGPS). Erik was intrigued. The two started working together.

VNGPS is a network of volunteers spread all across the Sahel region of Senegal who plant fruit trees in villages and build community farms. It also educates people on environmental problems in the region and organic permaculture techniques to raise their crop yields.

The goal is to slow Sahara desertification southward into the Sahel region, increase biodiversity, fight climate change while offering locally grown food to combat malnutrition, plus aid in the financial security and independence of Senegalese people.

“People in the region are being lifted from poverty sustainably because of the actions and efforts of VNGPS,” said Erik. “Their fruit tree planting and community farm start-ups are important, because most people in the region go 9 months every year without eating a fresh vegetable or fruit.”

Based on a volunteer network, no one involved in VNGPS is paid. Not even Mamadou or Erik. Every dollar donated goes directly toward the project. Without a salary, Erik splits his time between Senegal and the States. Originally from Fallon, Nevada, Erik works for Tesla to fund travel and help support the VNGPS mission. Founder and President Mamadou Babacar Diop is a teacher, in addition to operating the organization.

“Mamadou Diop is a very generous, selfless and honorable man. He is the type of person who gives his whole self to benefit his community. It is a great honor for me to work alongside him,” said Erik.

“I’d really love to see VNGPS financially supported enough to offer Mamadou a small salary,” said Erik. “I’ll keep helping it expand as a volunteer.”

The foundational knowledge Erik learned in Agronomy put him in prime position to act when he was put in the right position to find and follow his passion.

Learn more about the Volunteer Network for a Green and Prosperous Sahel online at vngps.org.

Grant looks at breeding mung bean for plant-based protein market

Iowa State University plant breeders and researchers are working to develop a new crop suited for the plant-based protein market. The first step is developing new varieties of mung bean, a new crop here in the United States. Farmers in Asia have grown mung bean for hundreds of years. This crop is uniquely positioned to help mid-western U.S. farmers leverage high yield, high protein mung bean varieties to diversify their land management and improve on-farm income.

The “unsung mung” is a drought tolerant, nitrogen fixing legume that can be used for plant-based protein source and is currently used in numerous edible food products around the world. Mung bean is a source of protein in vegetarian burgers found on grocery shelves, and in protein rich pastas, cheeses, snacks. A mung bean isolate can be used in baking also. Mung bean is also widely available in the United States as an egg substitute called “Just Egg.”

The diverse interdisciplinary team of researchers led by Dr. Arti Singh, Assistant Professor in the department of Agronomy, has received a USDA-NIFA grant to begin the project focused on mung bean breeding for plant-based protein in superior agronomic variety. Additional Iowa State researchers include Drs. Mark Licht (Cropping Systems Agronomist), Daren Mueller (Plant Pathologist), Matthew O’Neal (Entomologist), and Buddhi Lamsal (Food Scientist). Dr. Steven Cannon, USDA-ARS geneticist, is a collaborating member.

External partners include the University of Tennessee and the University of Vermont, providing the team necessary expertise to undertake the project. In addition to these partnerships, Dr. Singh has identified areas for research pursuits and current market demands through detailed discussions with farmers and food processing companies over the past several years. Farmers and food processors in California, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kansas and Vermont support the project. Farmers in Kansas and Oklahoma have expressed their intent to help grow test plots for the project as well.

“I wanted to bring together a strong group of scientists to establish a coalition supporting the development of mung bean as a healthy and sustainable plant-based protein crop here in mid-west,” said Dr. Arti Singh, lead researcher. “These researchers will provide critical insight into the development of the crop, crop production and management, and genomic information. We are taking a wholistic approach to ensure that we can cater to the needs of farmers and a rapidly growing industry,”

The plant breeding team will focus on developing varieties with increased protein content by leveraging existing and new crosses developed by Dr. Singh. The larger team will evaluate crop management practices and contribute to specific traits that would be helpful, such as diseases, insect-pest, and water stress tolerance, and food related traits.

“Mung beans are already fairly drought tolerant,” said Dr. Singh. “But there are so many possibilities to explore with breeding efforts.”

The team will spend the next three years combing through data from 500 different lines of mung bean looking at seed yield, days to maturity, growth habit and nutritional traits like protein, amino acid, mineral content, and fiber content. They’ll map the genetic makeup of diverse genotypes and develop markers for selecting various traits that can be a valuable community resource.

Doing so will immediately help them work to quickly develop the high-yield, high-protein mung bean for use in plant-based protein market. In addition, it will give scientists insight into the various traits opening doors for future research.

Dr. Singh hopes that this project will lay the groundwork for developing supply chains and improving infrastructure to help bolster the growing plant-based protein market in the United States. It will also provide additional crop option in the crop rotation, and one that is very versatile and resilient.

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Castellano selected for Global Soil Partnership

Dr. Mike Castellano, agronomy, has been appointed by USDA and the Department of State to be the U.S. representative to the Global Soil Partnership. The GSP is a globally recognized mechanism established in 2012 to position soils in the global agenda through collective action. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations held its 10th plenary assembly of the Global Soil Partnership in May.

Dr. Castellano is the William T. Frankenberger Professor of Soil Science at Iowa State University. His research, teaching, and outreach aim to increase cropping systems productivity, profitability, and environmental performance by improving our understanding and management of soil resources. To achieve these outcomes, Mike uses a systems approach and strong collaborations with a broad array of scientists and engineers to track the storage and flow of nutrients, energy, and water throughout the crop-soil system. A range of stakeholders including government, non-governmental organizations, farmers, and industry regularly engage Mike to help advance sustainable crop production and soil management. His research has led to several public-private partnerships that benefit agriculture and the environment by implementing research results on managed lands. Mike earned a PhD in Soil Science from The Pennsylvania State University. His graduate students have successful careers working throughout the world in academia, government, and industry for the benefit of soil health. He is an active member of the Soil Science Society of America where he received the Early Career Award in 2016 and serves as the editor for the Soil Science Society of America Journal sections of Soil Biology & Biochemistry and Forest, Range & Wildland Soils.

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Agronomy hosts National Association of Plant Breeders 2022 Annual Meeting

aerial view of agronomic crops test plots

The Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University, in partnership with the Midwest USDA-ARS, is pleased to host the National Plant Breeders Association’s 2022 Annual Meeting. The Conference will be held on August 8-11, 2022, at the Scheman Building on the Iowa State University campus in Ames, IA.

The theme of the conference is the “Past, Present and Future of Plant Breeding.” We will take time to celebrate the past, discuss the challenges of today, and explore future prospects in plant breeding through multidisciplinary efforts. We are pleased to have the opportunity to host an in-person annual meeting. The conference will offer a variety of interactive opportunities including a pre-conference tour, dynamic sessions, tours of the North Central Region Plant Introduction Station and Agronomy farm at Iowa State University, and unique evening activities to connect, relax and enjoy.

Check out the agenda.

Learn more about the tours.

Information about lodging and logistics.

Meeting sponsors.

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Melinda Zubrod’s internship with Corteva in Denver

Taking on an internship during the summer is a great way to expand your knowledge and experience for the area you are interested in; it’s a plus when you get to travel somewhere new and different. Junior in agronomy from northwest Iowa, Melinda

Zubrod, took the opportunity to travel and complete an internship all in one. Over the summer, she headed to Denver, Colorado, a Research and Development intern with Corteva.

Maintaining test plots of wheat and corn to protect the purity of crop varieties was one of Melinda’s biggest responsibilities. She also worked on establishing various methods of pollen control and collection. She assisted with the planting and harvesting of wheat and corn. With the crops work she was doing, she also got to help aid in applying different treatments across experimental plots and helped collect quantitative and cultivate data. A unique responsibility she had was overseeing and directing the daily tasks of a group of high school student workers. Not only did Melinda get to have hands-on experience with all aspects of crop production, but she also gained leadership experience and got to practice her delegation skills.

You may ask how a girl from the northwest, Iowa, ends up in Denver for the summer. “ I applied for this internship thinking it would be an interesting location to work and live at,” Melinda shares. She had an enjoyable summer there and was able to experience different farming practices than what she had been exposed to in Iowa. Melinda shares, “An example of this was the irrigation systems I learned about various forms of irrigation, including drip tape, pivot irrigation, and flood irrigation.”

Throughout her summer, she made life-long memories, but the one that stuck with her the most was getting live flies in the mail to help pollinate the wheat. A fond memory for her, but surely not for anyone outside of the agronomy department! She learned a lot from this experience; her biggest takeaway was that she learned all of the work and planning that goes into releasing commercial varieties of wheat and corn.

Alumni feature: Erin Smeltzly

Erin Smeltzly turned her agronomy degree into a career with Syngenta, Golden Harvest after graduating in 2021. Her experience as an undergrad was so successful she enrolled in the Iowa State MS in Agronomy online master’s program.

Shortly after starting with Golden Harvest as a development sales representative in northwest Illinois, Erin transitioned to a farm success manager. In that role Erin supports the company’s digital agronomy tools and strives to bring added value to farmers.

“My undergraduate experience at Iowa State was outstanding,” said Erin. “The professors and culture of the department of agronomy is just indescribable.”

As an undergraduate Erin was involved with Agronomy Club serving as president her senior year. She was a member of the soil judging team and a teaching assistant for a handful of classes. Her experience working in Dr. Danny Singh’s soybean breeding lab gave her an insight look at graduate student life. Something she values now having enrolling in the MS in Agronomy online program.

“Working in the breeding lab really allowed me to get to know graduate students in the department,” she said. “From the grad students I got to learn about the workload and classes from their perspective.”

Erin credits her easy transition into her career to the wide variety of experiences she had in Agronomy that prepared her for the workforce. The career fairs were very important as I looked for internships to explore the Agricultural industry. The clubs on campus that I was a part of made it a priority to provide professional development and leadership opportunities.

“I wholeheartedly believe that ISU prepared me to be the best I could be in the work force and as a grad student as long as I was willing to take advantage of the resources provided to me,” she said.

The opportunities are endless.

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Attending the American Farm School in Greece

Agronomy students Tess Kern and Rebecca Johnson traveled to Thessaloniki, Greece to attend the American Farm School Spring semester.

Founded in 1904 by Dr. John Henry House and wife Susan Adeline, the American Farm School offers general and technical education based on the environmental, food, agricultural and life sciences. The holistic and experiential education prepares and inspires the whole person to lead, innovate and contribute to the sustainable future of Greece and the world.

Considerably smaller than Iowa State, the women found the American Farm School a nice change of pace. Their classes met once a week for four hours a day. Topics focused on crops grown in Greece and the local Mediterranean climate.

“We are learning about olive production systems, how to care for grape vines/viticulture, as well as a Greek language class,” said Tess Kern, junior. “We also take classes about weed science and soil and water conservation. There are classes that focus on sustainable ag management, international business, and food science.”

The location provided beautiful scenery and the excitement of additional trips.

“Zagorohoria and Loannina are mountain towns with an awesome history and some of the best views” said Tess. “We also spent time in Athens and some of the Greek islands. We took weekend trips to Paris, Berlin, Ireland, and Austria as well.”

Half a world away and the women felt right at home. The adjustment was a very easy and smooth one, due in part to the terrific people at the school who made them feel welcome. Our program was also fairly big with 18 Americans attending.

“The culture and language has been a big change, but it is very refreshing to experience and be immersed in a beautiful culture,” said Tess. “It’s hard to be homesick when you’re enjoying the culture and sights of gorgeous Greece!!”

Greece wasn’t Rebecca’s first choice in study abroad location, but it worked out in her favor.

“My first choice had strict border restrictions because of COVID and I was not able to go,” said Rebecca. “After meeting with study abroad advisors, I realized this program was a really great fit for the classes I was hoping to take, and my budget.”

The women agree it was an incredible experience full of growth and knowledge.

“Do it! It will change your life.”

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Breeding transforms sorghum’s potential as biofuel of the future

The biofuel of the future may well be sorghum-based, thanks to new inbred lines that are significantly more productive and cold-hardy than sorghum plants of the past.

Maria Salas-Fernandez, associate professor of agronomy, developed the lines, recently released through Iowa State University, with improved genetics capable of producing hybrids that deliver high biomass yields adapted to northern latitudes.

Sorghum is a popular crop worldwide, used primarily as grain, livestock feed and sweetener. Until now, the plant, which originated in the tropics, has done best in warmer regions with longer growing seasons than the upper Midwest. The new Iowa State lines break through this challenge by producing “photoperiod-sensitive hybrids,” which means they don’t flower or produce grain. This allows the hybrids to grow longer, accumulating biomass until the first frost, up to a month later than traditional sorghum plants.

“Sorghum has great potential as an energy crop,” Salas-Fernandez said. “Our new lines, IA100RPS and IA101RPS, produce hybrids with three times more dry matter than corn stover, yet need less nitrogen to grow.”

The biomass productivity of the hybrids generated with the new lines even exceeds miscanthus, a perennial adapted to cold environments and investigated for biofuels.

“Sorghum offers a number of economic and environmental benefits,” she said. “The seed is cheaper than corn, and it grows well with fewer inputs of pesticides and fertilizer. At the same time, it is an annual crop that uses similar equipment and familiar cultivation methods, so it fits well with conventional crop rotations in this region.”

The breeding lines she created also have improvements over traditional sorghum. Their better standability means the resulting hybrids are less prone to lodging, a condition where plant stems fall over in heavy wind or rain. In addition, the plants’ biomass has a low ash content when burned, which is desirable for some biofuel conversion technologies.

The new lines are featured in a recent publication in the Journal of Plant Registration by Salas-Fernandez and co-author Joshua Kemp, a research scientist in agronomy who helped manage the sorghum breeding program.

This success represents almost a decade of breeding and testing at multiple locations in Iowa. Interested collaborators in North Dakota, Wisconsin and Michigan also conducted their own tests.

“Even in states farther north, the results have been consistent with biomass yields superior to other commercial and public germplasm,” according to Salas-Fernandez.

Now, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center plans to experiment with the crop under an agreement with Salas-Fernandez to produce the seedstock needed.

“Dr. Maria Salas-Fernandez’s sorghum hybrids carry the genetics needed to best fit our bioenergy experimental sites located in Michigan and Wisconsin. They perform well under our more northern growing conditions and produce excellent yields,” said Kurt D. Thelen, a professor with the Department of Plant, Soil & Microbial Sciences at Michigan State University, and a cooperating faculty with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.

Salas-Fernandez’s mission to breed sorghum as a bioenergy crop suited for the north-central United States began soon after she came to Iowa State in 2008. Sorghum’s diverse uses and benefits, including its productivity and drought-tolerance, first caught her interest when she was employed in industry in Argentina, her home country.

Her related research includes working with other scientists at Iowa State to increase sorghum’s biomass by altering plant architecture. “We are developing plants with an optimized distribution of leaf angle across the plant that can allow more light to penetrate the canopy and increase overall photosynthetic capacity,” Salas-Fernandez said. “That will increase the plants’ efficient use of sunlight and its potential for growth.”

Sources of support for research on the new sorghum lines include the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the R.F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding at Iowa State, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Department of Agronomy and the Iowa Crop Improvement Association.

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Spring 2022 Honors project poster presentation

The ISU Honors Program hosted a poster presentation for the Spring 2022 Honors Project Posters, including three of our students.

Jensina Davis (not pictured): Artificial seed drying conditions and maize seed viability and vigor after storage (Wiedenhoeft academic: S.Goggi project)

Audrey Jenkins: The intersection of art and agronomy – Creating new diagrams for Agron 181 (Wiedenhoeft academic and project)

Allee Koestner: Tillage effects on soil fungi and bacteria (Wiedenhoeft academic: McDaniel project)

Jodie Parolini: A garden for grandma (Wiedenhoeft academic)

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Recipients of the C. R. Weber Award for Excellence in Plant Breeding

Kevin Chiteri grew up on a small farm in Western Kenya. Early on, he was exposed to growing crops for household consumption and surplus for sale. He obtained a B.S. (2013) in Microbiology & Biotechnology from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He was involved in advocacy for environmental sustainability, biotech adoption, and favorable government policies spurring the creation of bio-entrepreneurship opportunities for biosciences graduates. He obtained an M.S. (2017) in Molecular Biology from Bowling Green State University, Ohio. In 2019, he started his Ph.D. in Genetics and Genomics with Predictive Plant Phenomics (P3) specialization with Dr. Arti Singh. Kevin researches basic questions by exploring the phenotypic and genotypic diversity of the root & leaf architecture of the Iowa mungbean diversity panel. The first objective, “Dissecting the Root Phenotypic and Genotypic Variability of the Iowa Mung Bean Diversity Panel,” was recently published in Frontiers in Plant Science in 2022. Kevin continues to explore how the genetic diversity can be harnessed for mungbean crop improvement.

Kevin has served on several professional student committees, including the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) Research Conference officer, NAPPN2022, Agronomy Senator, NAPB-GSWG, the R.F. Baker Plant Breeding Symposium, Phenome2020, and Treasurer and President of Genetics and Genomics Group (G3). He has a passion for science communication (2020 Reiman Garden Science Communicator), biotechnology stewardship, and technology transfer, especially to smallholder farmers in low-income countries. Kevin enjoys discussing how geo-politics are critical for food security.

Matheus Krause is originally from Pato Branco, PR, Brazil. Spending time on his grandpa’s business and friends’ farm when growing up gave him a strong interest in agriculture and livestock. Following his dreams, he obtained a B.S. in Agronomy in 2015 with a specialization in France, followed by a master’s degree in Genetics and Plant Breeding in 2018 from the University of São Paulo. Later that year, Matheus started his Ph.D. in Plant Breeding at Iowa State University under Dr. William Beavis in the G. F. Sprague Quantitative Genetics Group. His graduate research work focuses on the development of estimation methods to obtain unbiased realized genetic gain using data from routine field trials, and on the development of novel breeding strategies to ensure optimal trade-offs among competing objectives. Matheus published a paper in Crop Science exploring genomic prediction in maize in the framework of multi-environment trials (METs). In addition, Matheus has been invited to join multi-disciplinary projects that have resulted in three peer-reviewed publications including mapping of leaf photosynthetic and functional traits in soybean, applying probability concepts for cultivar recommendation in METs, and detection of a major locus for spontaneous haploid genome doubling in maize.

Matheus has been actively involved in the R.F. Baker Plant Breeding Symposium, helping the Speaker Committee in 2020 and serving as the Information Technology Committee Chair in 2021. Additionally, he has been awarded a scholarship to attend the 2022 Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics from the University of Washington. When not working, Matheus enjoys reading, fishing, riding a motorcycle, listening to music, and biking.

Yan Zhou, originally from Hebei, China, obtained a B.S. in Plant Science from Agricultural University of Hebei in 2009 and a M.S. in Genetics from Nanjing Agriculture University in 2012. He then joined the industry working on male sterile genes in maize and helped develop a hybrid seed production system using transgenic multi-control sterility system, during which he developed a passion and an interest in inflorescence. Since 2015, Yan has been a Ph.D. student in Genetics and Genomics at Iowa State University, working in Dr. Patrick Schnable’s Lab. His graduate research work focuses on developing image-based phenotyping platforms that can be specifically used to study inflorescence and leaf architecture in grain crops. He has published two first author papers. First paper was published in Plant Physiology in 2019 focusing on semi-automated trait extraction from sorghum panicle images. His second paper was published in The Plant Cell in 2021, in which he and his colleagues found genetically associated measurement errors in several high-throughput phenotyping pipelines and tested its impacts on genetic inferences for QTL mapping and GWAS. He is working on his third paper on maize canopy architecture and schedule to submit it to peer review journal soon.

Yan has participated the R.F. Baker Plant Breeding Symposium at ISU and multiple Plant Sciences Symposia at other universities where he has shared his research findings. In his free time, Yan enjoys reading, running, practicing Kendo, and spending time with his two cats.

The C. R. Weber Award for Excellence in Plant Breeding was established in 1981 to recognize outstanding academic and research accomplishments by plant breeding graduate students in the Department of Agronomy. C. R. Weber was a professor in the Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University who made outstanding contributions to plant breeding, particularly in soybeans. The award was established by his family and friends to reward graduate students with the same goal for excellence to which he aspired. A cash award of $500 will be given to students in the Department of Agronomy with majors in plant breeding who meet the qualifications.

Congratulations Kevin, Matheus and Yan!

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Dr. Thompson to serve as Soil Science Society of America president

Dr. Michael Thompson is the Soil Science Society of America President-elect beginning a three year succession starting in 2023. He will serve as President in 2024 and past-president in 2025.

The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) is a progressive international scientific society founded in 1936 that fosters the transfer of knowledge and practices to sustain global soils. Based in Madison, WI, SSSA is the professional home for 6,000+ members and 800+ certified professionals dedicated to advancing the field of soil science. The Society provides information about soils in relation to crop production, environmental quality, forestry, ecosystem sustainability, bioremediation, waste management, urban uses, mining and reclamation, and across many closely related scientific disciplines and applied fields.

SSSA supports its members and certified professionals by providing quality research-based publications, educational programs, certifications, and science policy initiatives via a Washington, DC office.

Congratulations Dr. Thompson!

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