AgriLife Research cornbreeder Seth Murray has earned Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists finalist recognition for a second time.
As the human population booms, we hear the term “sustainable food supply” a great deal. One Texas A&M AgriLife researcher’s efforts to make corn production, whether for human or livestock consumption, more sustainable has earned him national recognition.
Texas A&M AgriLife Research corn breeder Seth Murray, the Eugene Butler Endowed Chair in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences in College Station, is among the finalists for the prestigious Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists.
Murray determined that individual genes poorly predict corn yield, so he began to evaluate the physical and spectral traits, the “phenome” of corn instead. Through the innovative use of statistical analysis of images collected from drones, he along with colleagues and students on his team examined the physical traits of corn over time and modeled them to predict the highest yielding plants, optimizing breeding and selection.
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