![Jerry Johnson, a University of Georgia professor of crop and soil sciences, has developed or co-developed a total of 44 new small grain crop varieties, including several wheat and barley cultivars. He was recently named UGA's 2015 Inventor of the Year.](https://secure.caes.uga.edu/news/multimedia/images/2105/IMG_6380LR.jpg)
Inventor of the Year
As a young man working on his family’s farm in Perry, Georgia, Jerry Johnson loved the sight of wheat growing in the fields. Decades later, Johnson, now a respected plant breeder and crop and soil sciences professor, received the 2015 Inventor’s Award from the University of Georgia Research Foundation (UGARF) for his work breeding wheat varieties for farmers in Georgia and across the Southeast.