Researchers should be integrating information science with applied plant breeding to serve a growing world population, a leading plant geneticist said during a plant biology symposium Thursday (Sept. 24).
It’s a “global grand challenge” that must address population and income increases, land and water concerns, changing climate, nutrition, health and biodiversity and overall sustainability, said Susan McCouch, of Cornell University.
A professor of plant breeding and genetics, plant biology, biological statistics and computational biology, McCouch said the process should include computer-based data gathering, model building and validation along with traditional plant breeding.
McCouch’s talk followed a morning of short presentations by faculty members and graduate students in the LSU AgCenter and LSU sponsored by the Center of Research Excellence in Plant Biotechnology and Crop Development.
The center includes researchers from various departments in the LSU AgCenter, LSU A&M and other state universities, said Mike Stout, L.D. Newsom Professor in Integrated Pest Management in the AgCenter Department of Entomology.
The symposium is part of the collaboration between AgCenter and A&M campus faculty members to produce solutions for the challenges to agriculture, Stout said.