Patricio Grassini, associate professor in agronomy and horticulture, has been awarded the 2020 Werner L. Nelson Award for Diagnosis of Yield-Limiting Factors by the American Society of Agronomy. The ASA presented the award during the society’s virtual annual meeting Nov. 11.
The ASA annual awards are presented for outstanding contributions to agronomy through education, national and international service and research. Grassini was chosen because of his creativity, innovation and involvement in the development, acceptance, and implementation of diagnostic services in higher, more profitable crop production.
Grassini earned a Bachelor of Science in agricultural engineering from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a doctorate in agronomy from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
He has authored 10 book chapters, 70 papers published in peer-review journals including top-tier journals such as Nature Communications, Nature Sustainability, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), and Plant, Cell & Environment.
His research interests center on crop yield potential, yield-gap analysis, and resource- and energy-use efficiency in cropping systems. His research in crop modeling covers a diverse range of cropping systems including rainfed crops in Argentina and Sub-Saharan Africa, high-yield irrigated crops in the U.S. Corn Belt, and perennial crop systems such as oil palm in Indonesia.
Grassini serves as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Field Crops Research and Global Food Security journals. He was chair of the CSSA C3 Crop Ecology Division during the 2019 term.
The award is provided through the Agronomic Science Foundation by the Werner L. Nelson Fund and administered through the ASA.
