Area of Focus

• Soybean Breeding and Genetics
• Data Management and Analytics
• Molecular Breeding

Research Interests

My research interests align well with UNL’s research mission by; (i) seeking an active research agenda that delivers goods and services to the citizens of Nebraska, (ii) providing solutions to the agricultural challenges faced by communities in the state, (iii) and serving as a gateway to open up the state to cultural and technological advancements by interacting with the scientific community across states and borders.

I am a collaborator in the Soybean Breeding Program with Dr. George Graef. Our primary focus is to provide Nebraska farmers with the best soybean varieties they can grow in their fields. This is a very comprehensive program that entails field and laboratory work and there is a multitude of projects going through the breeding pipeline at any given time. I provide support to the program in the areas of molecular genetics, trait introgression, early generation and bioinformatics. I am also involved in more specific projects that leverage the unique traits of the germplasm developed in the program. I am interested in experiments dealing with increasing the genetic pool of US soybean, and we are one of the few public breeding programs that have executed long-term (30+ years) selection programs with this aim. The program has also developed ultra-high seed protein germplasm and I am interested in studying the physiological routes of nitrogen uptake in soybean and how they relate to nitrogen use, seed composition and seed yield. We're constantly addressing the biotic challenges that Nebraska farmers face with the molecular mining, introgression and validation of genetic regions conferring resistance or tolerance against those challenges.