Dear Alumni and Friends,
Welcome to the Fall semester. I am delighted to share with you some of the remarkable achievements in 2024 from the Division of Plant Science and Technology (DPST). Our faculty and staff continue to provide learning and leadership opportunities for our students in classrooms, research laboratories, field, and international settings. Our mission is to keep students on track towards graduation, and to provide them with high quality education and the foundation for life-long career success.
Recent investments into a new teaching space enabled us to equip a new digital teaching lab with computers and software packages to teach new courses in precision agriculture, in data science, and advanced molecular biology. The newly purchased equipment provides our students with easy access to advanced technologies and prepares our students for a broad range of future careers. In 2024, 100% of our students started their career or entered graduate school within 6 months of graduation.
We continuously adapt our academic programs to optimally prepare our students for the careers of the future. We are currently undergoing a reimagining of our curriculum and continue to develop exciting new degree opportunities for our students. For example, in response to our popular certificate programs in Floral Artistry & Management and Precision Agriculture, we launched a new Landscape Design certificate for our undergraduate students and have other new certificate options under consideration. These new programs will provide students with an opportunity to advance their degree and improve their career chances by showcasing their additional expertise to future employers. This future-oriented curriculum development will allow us to establish ambitious goals and to identify the major steps that will help us to achieve our mission: to train our students in emerging technologies and optimally prepare them for their future careers, to discover and disseminate new knowledge that will help us to address current and future challenges in the plant sciences, and to support farmers and the agricultural industry in Missouri through education, training, research, and community programs.
The Division continues to evolve. Several faculty members retired last year and continue to serve our Division as Emeriti Professors. We are sad to lose these accomplished plant scientists and wish them all the best for their well-deserved retirement. On the other hand, we are very excited to welcome nine new faculty members to our Division. With Michelle Brooks, we gained a new passionate and enthusiastic instructor with enormous greenhouse and integrated pest management experience. Emily Althoff, Carson Roberts, and Alex Mangialardi will strengthen our expertise in urban entomology, forage agronomy, and weed science, and will allow us to improve our extension services for our stakeholders in the state. Rasel Parvej joined our Division as the new Director of the Soil and Plant Testing Lab and the Soil Health Assessment Center. Our vision is to bring both facilities under one roof to enhance synergistic collaborations, and improve the services that both labs provide to farming and research communities. In addition, Erin Sparks, Joseph Lynch, Xiaoping Xin, and Erik Amezquita Morataya joined our Division, and will improve our teaching and research programs by their expertise in biomechanics and corn root function, metabolic engineering, soil and data science. Currently ongoing is the recruitment of faculty members with expertise in root biology, rice agronomy, and precision agriculture.
Last year brought many other highlights for DPST. For example, the world-class researchers in the Division of Plant Science and Technology continued to excel in cutting-edge research. The goal of the research and scholarly activity in the Division is to identify solutions to “real-life problems” that threaten the agronomic productivity in Missouri, the U.S., and the world. Our research programs are funded by federal (e.g. National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, US Department of Agriculture) and state funding agencies (e.g. Missouri Department of Agriculture, Missouri Department of Conservation), commodity groups and industry. Last year, we recorded an impressive $19.5 million in shared credit awards, a testament to our commitment to advancing knowledge and innovation, and Mizzou´s land-grant mission. Our research continues to advance in critical areas including digital agriculture, threats to agronomic plant productivity, and plant breeding and engineering. We will continue to push the boundaries of new knowledge creation, and new technologies that improve plant and soil health, productivity, and sustainability. Our extension faculty share their expertise with farmers via field days, webinars, social media, and podcasts; reach billions of readers; and contribute more than $100 million per year to the state´s economy.
The excellence of our research programs is illustrated by new prestigious recognitions for our faculty, including: Ron Mittler and Felix Fritschi are newly elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Gary Stacey received the Stephen Hales Prize from the American Society of Plant Biologists, Walter Gassmann the Noel T. Kern Award from the American Phytopathological Society, Bing Yang became a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society, and Kelly Nelson was selected as a new Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy. Learning from these scientists in classrooms, or by getting involved in their research programs can be a life-changing experience for undergraduate and graduate students. Faculty members of the Division were also the leading forces behind the launch of the Digital Agriculture Research and Extension Center (DAREC). DAREC brings together scientists, engineers, extension specialists, and students to develop emerging digital technologies and artificial intelligence solutions to transform conventional agriculture into highly efficient and sustainable systems.
I am a proud member of the Division of Plant Science and Technology, and I am looking forward to a successful conclusion of 2025.
Sincerely,
Heike Bücking