Pamela Ronald is a professor in the UC Davis department of plant pathology and the Genome Center. She also serves as director of grass genetics at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville and faculty director of the UCD Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy.
Ronald’s Laboratory for Crop Genetics Innovation and Scientific Literacy is dedicated to “developing a new generation of staple food crops through genetic innovations, education and partnerships.”
Her research includes studying the genetic basis of resistance to disease and tolerance to stress in rice. Together with her collaborators, she has engineered rice for resistance to disease and tolerance to flooding, which seriously threaten rice crops in Asia and Africa.