The 2025 Spring Seminar Series is complete. Look for the fall series starting in September.
Seminars will be in person, streamed live and recorded at 11 a.m. CST/CDT on Thursdays in Keim Hall, Room 150, unless otherwise noted.
UNL employees join via Zoom at: https://go.unl.edu/agrohortseminar
Community members join via Zoom at: https://go.unl.edu/agrohortseminarcommunity
PAST SEMINARS
Feb. 13, 2025
Metamitron, Six Years in the Making: Palmer Amaranth Control in Sugar Beet
NEVIN LAWRENCE
Associate Professor and Weed Management Specialist, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
As of 2023, there were no herbicides to control Palmer amaranth in sugar beet within Nebraska or Colorado. This presentation covers the past six years of research from the Panhandle Weed Science group that led to a emergency use label for a novel herbicide, saving the industry $7 million in yield in 2024.
February 20, 2025
Designing Nitrogen-Use Efficient Maize Using a Population Genomics Approach
JINLIANG YANG
Associate Professor and Charles O. Gardner Professorship of Agronomy, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Yang focuses on bridging the gap between genotypes and phenotypes. At a broader scale, his group is keen to integrate various large-scale biological data such as phenomics, genomics, transcriptomics, methylomics datasets and functional annotations to boost the power of Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) and Genomic Selection (GS).
Agriculture Biotechnology — A Tool for Functional Genomics and Complementing Plant Breeding Programs
THOMAS CLEMENTE
Eugene W. Price Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Clemente received a B.S. degree in biology with a minor in chemistry from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1985. He earned a master's degree in plant pathology from Oklahoma State University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in plant pathology from North Carolina State University in 1993. Following his doctorate program, he did postdoctoral training at Monsanto Company from 1993 to 1996. For 29 years, he has served as the Director of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Plant Transformation Core Research Facility. Upon retirement in June of 2025, Clemente plans on writing a memoir of his career in science.
Clemente will discuss using ag biotechnology in plant breeding.
March 6, 2025
The Role of Conservation Management in Nitrogen Balance: Findings from the UNL-NRCS Collaboration
ADEWOLE ADETUNJI
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Groundwater nitrate contamination and greenhouse gas emissions are critical environmental challenges in Nebraska's corn systems, driven largely by inefficient nitrogen use and management practices.
During this seminar, Adetunji will explore how integrated cover crop, no-till management, crop rotation and optimized nitrogen rates can improve nitrogen use efficiency, boost economic returns and reduce environmental impacts at two long-term corn tillage sites in Nebraska.
March 13, 2025
What We Learned From Three Years of Growing Tye, Vetch and Mixture in Eastern Nebraska Under Variable Precipitation Seasons
TAUANA FERRIERA DE ALMEIDA
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Ferriera De Almeida is an agronomist, holds a master’s degree in soil science from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and completed her doctoral degree 2024. She is a key contributor to the Precision Sustainable Agriculture Coordinated Agriculture Project. She is researching the efficiency of cover crops under different management systems to improve soil health, control weeds and pests and increase cash crop yield.
March 27, 2025
Water or Wisdom? Tackling Agriculture Sustainability in Türkiye
DENIZE ISTIPLILER
Assistant Professor, Department of Field Crops, Ege University, Izmir, Turkey
Turkey, the twelfth largest plant producer in the world, faces significant agricultural sustainability challenges: natural resource scarcity, particularly water, and technical shortcomings. This presentation explores whether drought and water shortages are the main culprits or if gaps in knowledge, technology and management practices lie at the root of the problem.
April 3, 2025
Ecometabolomics and Plant Response to Climate Change
NOURE BENKEBLIA
Professor of Crop Science; Director of Laboratory of Crop Science, Department of Life Sciences, Caribbean Centre for Research in Bioscience, University of the West Indies Mona Campus, Jamaica
With over 400,000 metabolites estimated in plant species, metabolomics is being considered as a promising tool that revealed its efficiency to study the complete set of small naturally present or stresses elicited metabolites. The study led to a comprehensive analysis of metabolites and metabolic pathways in plant tissues. The relatively new research discipline of Eco-Metabolomics is the application of metabolomics techniques to ecology with the aim to characterise biochemical interactions of organisms across different spatial and temporal scales. This experimental high-throughput analysis of molecular networks is considered a central approach to characterize the adaptation of plant metabolism to the change in the environment in particular rising temperatures and carbon dioxide enrichment of the atmosphere.
Seminar Cancelled
Effects of High Temperature on Rice Grain Development and Quality Formation Based on Comparative Genotype Analysis
Julie Thomas
Research Scientist, Director Experiment Station, Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences, University of Arkansas
Enhancing the quality and appearance of rice grain is crucial for achieving approval from the marketplace. Grain chalkiness is a quantitative genetic trait, and the molecular mechanisms remain unknown. The study used genome-wide association (GWAS) and linkage studies in a diverse and mapping population to discover loci linked with grain quality traits under high night temperature. An in-depth transcriptome and post-transcriptional regulation analysis showed chalk and non-chalk genotypes had different gene expression patterns.
Herbicide Resistance
PETER SIKKEMA
Professor Emeritus, Field Crop Weed Management, University of Guelph, Canada
Herbicides have been placed in Herbicide Groups based on their sites of action. A major driving force for this classification system is that growers have been encouraged to rotate or mix herbicides from different HG to delay the evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds; because, in theory, all active ingredients within a herbicide group physiologically affect weeds similarly. Although herbicide resistance in weeds has been studied for decades, recent research has demonstrated patterns of cross-resistance are more complex than merely stating a certain weed biotype is resistant to a HG. The objective of this presentation is to highlight the intricacies associated with cross-resistance patterns within HG.