Breeding and Genetics

Mitchell Feldmann has been hired as an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences and continues with the internationally prestigious UC Davis Strawberry Breeding Program. His assistant professor position began this month.

Ten UC Davis students and postdoctoral researchers recently attended the annual Vegetable and Flower Conference of the American Seed Trade Association. They enjoyed the opportunity to showcase their research during poster sessions, hear speakers and network with people in the industry. More than 800 seed professionals from 33 countries attended.

Among those attending from the Department of Plant Sciences were:

Maria Alejandra Ponce de Leon

Top plant scientists from across Africa have just completed the first phase of a ground-breaking course in gene editing for crops: It aims to harness a cutting-edge breeding tool to adapt African agriculture to growing populations and the threat of climate change.

“The talent’s there. We just need to enable it,” said Allen Van Deynze, of the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. “We’re enabling it with training, with tools and with support for their labs. That’s part of our program.”

Maeli Melotto, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences specializing in plant immunity, has been recognized as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals.

Imtiyaz Khanday, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, is co-leading an international team that has propagated a commercial hybrid rice strain as a clone through seeds with 95 percent efficiency. The method that led to this breakthrough could lower the cost of hybrid rice seed, making high-yielding, disease-resistant rice strains available to low-income farmers worldwide.

Jorge Dubcovsky and researchers in his lab have been recognized for providing basic genetic information about wheat and improved germplasm that is being used by scientists around the world to improve “the staff of life.” Those efforts are bringing new varieties of wheat to farmers adapting to new conditions. For his leadership in those efforts, Dubcovsky was awarded the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources, and a $2,000 prize, at the recent annual meeting of the Crop Science Society of America.

E. Charles Brummer has been honored for bettering alfalfa science and cultivation by the North American Alfalfa Improvement Conference. Brummer, a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, is the director of the UC Davis Plant Breeding Center and involved in researching a wide range of crops for forage, grain and fiber.

Plant pathologist Paul G. Smith, the founder of pepper genetics and a retired professor at UC Davis, has been recognized for a lifetime of contributions that continue to shape plant sciences today.

Smith was a professor in the former UC Davis Department of Vegetable Crops, one of four departments that merged to become the current Department of Plant Sciences. His contributions were recognized at the recent 25th International Pepper Conference in Tucson, Ariz.

Maeli Melotto and her team at the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences are looking for strains of lettuce that are genetically stronger at resisting bacteria that can make people sick. Their work has led to the identification of a gene that could play a role in the plant’s susceptibility to E. coli, a bacterium that causes potentially lethal intestinal illness.

A multi-state team led by Patrick J. Brown has been awarded nearly $3.8 million over the next four years for a project to improve pistachio production as the industry faces warmer winters and scarcer water.

“We are at this unique point in history where we can do this,” said Brown, an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences.