Fran tenBensel Benne | Agronomy and Horticulture
Guillermo Raul Balboa joined the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture Sept. 7 as a research assistant professor in nutrient management. He works with the precision ag team led by colleague Laila Puntel.
Balboa’s research interests include site-specific crop management, crop simulation models and crop ecophysiology. He is currently working on a large multistate project called DAWN. The Dashboard for Agricultural Water Use and Nutrient Management project is supported by a NIFA grant where the goal is to develop decision support tools for farmers.
He also works on crop modeling where he takes collected crop data across seasons and calibrates models to simulate different scenarios. The goal is to better understand production systems and to generate new recommendations for farmers to improve their production systems.
Balboa is originally from Cordoba, Argentina. He finished a master’s degree in crop production at Rio Cuarto National University and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue a doctorate at Kansas State University working on managements practices to close yield gaps in corn and soybean. After earning a doctorate in agronomy, he moved to Canberra, Australia, for a postdoctoral opportunity at CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, working in farming systems and digital agriculture. Before coming to Nebraska, he served as assistant professor in cropping systems and digital agriculture at Rio Cuarto National University where he led a project to launch the first university digital ag farm in Argentina.
“All these opportunities allowed me to meet many great people and travel to places that helped shape my professional career as well as make friends all over the world,” Balboa said.
Balboa said he is learning to play the guitar in his spare time after a friend gifted him one.
“My musical skills are not like my research ones but I’m doing my best,” he said.
He also enjoys cooking for friends and traveling to new places, when possible. He looks forward to visiting family and friends in his home country over the holidays.
