Plant Breeding in the Omics Era

The modern plant breeder needs to understand how genes and environments interact to control the expression of plant phenotypes in new cultivars.  Cutting-edge tools from genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and phenomics can provide insight into these phenomena and contribute to the development of new varieties with improved performance characteristics.  My program focuses on new trait development in maize and sorghum using native and induced genetic variation.  These programs integrate conventional plant breeding, mutagenesis, mutant-based reverse genetics, and functional genomics strategies to create germplasm for crop improvement. These strategies have been used to develop semi-dwarf popcorn hybrids with improved plant architecture, dhurrin-free forage and bioenergy sorghum varieties that eliminate the risk of HCN poisoning, grain sorghum genotypes with novel grain composition and end-use characteristics, and heat tolerant maize hybrids adapted to environments in Asia.