Daniel P. Schachtman, George Holmes Professor of Agronomy and Horticulture and director of the Nebraska Center for Biotechnology, is set to retire from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln on Aug. 15, 2026, after more than a decade on campus.
Schachtman joined the university in February 2014 as a fully tenured professor, drawn by the opportunity to make his research results more relevant to agricultural practices by moving his research into the field. Schachtman spent 75% of his time on research with the other 25% in administration and said it was thanks to department staff and his faculty colleagues and collaborators that his accomplishments were made possible.
When he was 13 years old, a broken arm and a broken leg in the same year left Schachtman housebound and restless. One afternoon he was flipping through television channels and landed on a PBS program: Making Things Grow Indoors, hosted by Thalassa Cruso. The weekly program, based on Cruso’s book of the same name, inspired Schachtman to start growing houseplants in his family’s Chicago-area basement, and eventually, vegetables in the backyard. That teenage curiosity eventually grew into a career in agriculture that shaped scientists’ understanding of plant roots — how they function and how they interact with their environment, including soil nutrients, water and microbes.
A career built in the field
Schachtman’s work at the university was driven by two fundamental objectives: revealing how soil bacteria helps crops thrive under drought and nitrogen-limited conditions and determining how roots and the compounds they secrete recruit and shape the microbial communities that surround and inhabit them. He pursued those goals by mentoring students, postdoctoral researchers and technicians, watching many of them grow into accomplished agricultural researchers. His lab produced 52 publications during his tenure at the university, part of a career total of 135, with several more still underway.
One of his most prominent projects focused on biofuels; in 2015, Schachtman was the project leader of a multi-institutional research team awarded with a $13.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The team aimed to better understand how plants and microbes interact, and to learn which sorghum germplasm grows better with less water and nitrogen.
“The field facilities and the generosity of my collaborators greatly enriched my experience at the university and allowed me to do more of the research I felt was important for agriculture,” Schachtman said. “One of my most memorable projects in Nebraska involved working on alkaline soils in the Sandhills, where I met ranchers and discovered a uniquely beautiful region of the United States that I was not aware of before moving to Nebraska.”
In addition to his research, Schachtman built the Nebraska Center for Biotechnology into a financially stable network of core facilities equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation that continues to support researchers across the university. Under his directorship, the center focused its mission on providing faculty, students, and postdoctoral researchers with access to advanced biological research tools and a team of highly trained experts. Serving as director also gave Schachtman a front-row seat to emerging areas of research and the outstanding research being done at the university.
Beyond this, Schachtman is the chief executive officer of Viosimos Agriculture, a company that uses biochemical molecules to eliminate specific fungal diseases in horticultural and broad-acre agriculture.
A proud legacy
When reflecting on his career, Schachtman points to several accomplishments that stand out. The first is establishing one of the nation’s earliest laboratories to apply modern molecular techniques to studying the soil and plant root microbiomes of crop plants under agricultural field conditions rather than solely in greenhouse settings. He also takes pride in directing the Nebraska Center for Biotechnology, which he describes as a university-wide resource supporting faculty research across a broad range of the life sciences. Finally, he highlights his laboratory’s work uncovering how genetic differences among corn varieties influence the compounds released by their roots and — in turn — how those differences can be used to shape the surrounding rhizosphere microbiome.
His career has earned wide recognition, including being named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015, the American Society of Plant Biology in 2017, the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute from 2016-2019 and holding the George Holmes University Professorship since 2020.
In retirement, Schachtman plans to trade university life for the trailhead — hiking, biking, swimming, gardening and traveling nationally and internationally. He looks forward to more free time to stay active, to work on the company he started and to enjoy life together with his spouse in northern California.
