Industry Partnerships Advance Plant Breeding Innovation

By Andi Anderson

Plant breeding has been a core part of agriculture since the earliest civilizations. Farmers selected the strongest crops and replanted their seeds, gradually improving their plants over generations. Today, this practice remains essential, especially as farmers face new challenges such as extreme weather, pests and plant diseases.

Modern science has transformed plant breeding. The discovery of genetics allowed researchers to understand how traits are passed from parent plants to their offspring. This has helped plant breeders go beyond selection based on appearance and instead study the genes that influence key traits such as yield, disease resistance and drought tolerance.

Now, plant breeding is moving into a new era. With decades of data stored on crop varieties, researchers are working to predict which plant crossings will succeed before they are even grown in the field. Beck’s Hybrids, a major seed company serving farmers across the United States, has spent more than ten years developing such predictive tools.

To strengthen this effort, Beck’s has partnered with eight Purdue University professors, several graduate students, and The Data Mine, a university-based data learning initiative. Together, they are building a genetic-informed prediction system to help breeders and farmers choose the best seed varieties for their regions.

Mitchell Tuinstra, professor of agronomy and scientific director of the Institute for Plant Sciences, is helping guide the project. He explained that the system will assist plant breeders in selecting parent plants with the highest chance of producing strong offspring that can perform well in specific soil, weather and pest conditions.

This collaboration supports the development of seeds that are more reliable and better adapted to local growing environments. As climate conditions continue to shift, partnerships like this can help farmers maintain productivity and resilience while ensuring crops meet the needs of a growing population.

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