Plants like people, are resilient and adaptive creatures. This is important because our survival depends on our ability to change with the environment. Due to global warming, more frequent and extreme weather events are in our future creating challenges for the food, fiber, and fuel sector of agriculture. This is an image of a field that flooded three times also experiencing hail, drought, and intense winds within a 3-month window. The flaking and cracked layers of soil are a journal of sorts recording these weather events. If you look closely, you will see that the separated into layers of hard and tightly packed soil making it challenging for plants to break through the soil surface to reach the sun. Despite all this, many corn plants survived and are seen here breaking out of the ground. My work is focused on how different environmental conditions such as the ones in this field and genotypes interact to create an array of phenotypes. I work with quantitative genetics where we analyze large data sets to understand these complex relationships in a variety of crops including soybeans, corn, miscanthus, chickpeas, and wheat.
