Stress & Local Adaptation

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the largest cereal crop cultivated for food, feed and fuel throughout the world. Although yields of maize have increased concomitantly during the past decades, drought sensitivity continues to limit yield, especially in rainfed production...

In tandem with the VitaMaize investigations, our group is evaluating carotenoid (provitamin A) and tocochromanol (vitamin E) nutritional profiles in grain, as well as whole-plant physiological responses and agronomic productivity, of 350 maize hybrids under combined...

Phytophthora blight, caused by the oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora capsici, poses a significant risk to vegetable production globally. As P. capsici is readily dispersed in contaminated soil, water, and plant tissue, the recent increase in large-scale flooding...

Water Efficient Sorghum Technologies (WEST) is developing crops that use less water to produce more biomass. The first step to achieve this goal is to measure evaporation on a large scale. We use our expertise in remote sensing and high-throughput phenotyping to...

The efficient and effective development of high-yielding, stress-resilient crop varieties is contingent on the ability to relate genotype to phenotype in the face of a changing climate. Recent innovations in DNA sequencing technologies have accelerated the development...