Texas plant breeding professor gets Indian lifetime achievement award
Stelly, a professor of cytogenetics, genetics, genomics and plant breeding in the soil and crop sciences department, holds a joint appointment with Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Texas A&M University in College Station.
He received his award during a program jointly organized by the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad and the Dr. S.W. Mensinkai Memorial Education and Research Foundation.
The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes individuals who have made immense contributions in the fields of genetics and cytogenetics, according to the organization. Another American lifetime achievement awardee was Dr. Bikram Gill, a cytogeneticist who works with wheat at Kansas State University.
Stelly has more than 40 years of diverse breeding experiences with diploid and polyploid crops such as potato, tomato, soybean, maize, conifers, sorghum and cotton, including researching germplasm introgression, reproductive biology and cytology, cytogenetics, genetics and genomics.
Over the past half-dozen years or so, his lab and collaborators identified and mapped millions of minute molecular DNA markers called single-nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs or “snips,” Stelly said. Thousands of these were chosen for development of a high-quality, high-density SNP array that enables high-speed genetic analysis.
Research that once took years can now be obtained in a matter of days, he said. With expedited timelines, breeders and related researchers, including graduate students, can tackle more substantive research goals.
Moreover, the results can be used to develop marker-assisted selection, a technology where DNA markers are used individually or collectively for indirect selection toward genetic types with improved traits and trait combinations, Stelly said.
Stelly said he is excited about the new opportunities to combine the genetic materials he created with the new SNP genotyping methods, because together they promise significant increases in the ranges and rates of genetic inquiry and gain. He said this bodes well for graduate students and breeders alike.
For more information:
Texas A&M University
Dr. David Stelly
979-845-2745
stelly@tamu.edu
www.tamu.edu