Browse Plant Breeding Stories - Page 2

The quest for the perfect pumpkin each fall doesn’t start at the local patch. In fact, it starts up to 10 years prior for researchers like University of Georgia plant geneticist Cecilia McGregor. McGregor leads breeding efforts in the selective pumpkin variety called the ‘Orange Bulldog’, following the retirement of the program’s founder, horticulturist George Boyhan.

When you buy something at the store, you have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting no matter where you buy it — a Coke is a Coke, Oreos are Oreos — and whether you buy them in Atlanta or Seattle doesn’t really change what you get. Farmers are in a similar position when they choose what to plant, but in the burgeoning field of industrial hemp, it turns out that things are much more complicated.

Samantha Wegener enrolled at the University of Georgia’s Tifton campus after earning her associate’s degree in biology from the Technical College of the Lowcountry in Beaufort, South Carolina. It was during her last semester in Beaufort that Wegener was introduced to the world of plant breeding.

The wild relatives of modern peanut plants have the ability to withstand disease in ways that modern peanut plants can’t. The genetic diversity of these wild relatives means that they can shrug off the diseases that kill farmers’ peanut crops, but they also produce tiny nuts that are difficult to harvest because they burrow deep in the soil.

Native to North America, blueberries are the most-recently commercially domesticated fruit in the U.S. Just a little over a century ago researchers began studying this wild berry with an intent to develop improved varieties for commercial cultivation.

Brent Marable, assistant director of the University of Georgia Innovation Gateway office, has been elected as president of the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Alumni Association Board of Directors for the 2019-2020 term.

About 180 northeast Georgians and University of Georgia faculty and staff toured the J. Phil Campbell Sr. Research and Education Center on June 25 as part of the center’s Annual Corn Boil and Field Day.

 It’s summer, and Georgia gardeners are anxiously awaiting their first tomato harvest. Just in time for those first tomato sandwiches, researchers at the University of Georgia have helped unlock the mystery of what separates today’s tomatoes from their inedible ancestors.

Each year the Trial Gardens at the University of Georgia hosts a summer open house to show off the season’s best plants. This year they’re working to beat the heat by moving the party from July to June.