Crops
From alfalfa to zoysia, the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics faculty work on a wide diversity of crops, made possible by Georgia’s diverse soil and climate types.
Alfalfa & other forages
Forage crops play a significant role in the agriculture of the southeast, underpinning beef, dairy, sheep production, and the growing pleasure horse industry. In addition, forages play a crucial role in environmental stewardship, sustaining soil health and water quality. The forage breeding program at UGA focuses on research and cultivar development of cool-season perennial grasses and legumes using a combination of conventional breeding and genomics to develop adapted cultivars with improved yield and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses.
Faculty Contact
Blueberry
Blueberry is native to North American and Georgia blueberry production ranks 4th place national wide. Georgia blueberry breeding program was established in 1950’s and released more than 40 cultivars. Brightwell, Suziblue, Alapaha and Georgia Dawn are among the popular cultivars grown in the southeastern region. Our breeding program is advancing into utilizing genetics and genomic tools to facilitate genetic trait selection and shorten breeding cycles.
Faculty Contact
Corn
Corn is the #1 grain in both the US and the world. We study the complex relationship between corn traits, genetics, and the environment to create improved varieties to overcome the challenges of corn production. Whether it’s flowering, nutrients, climate adaptation, or microbial partnerships, we aim to know how corn works so we can make it work better for us and for the environment.
Faculty Contacts
- Jason Wallace
- Joe Knoll (USDA)
Cotton
Approximately half of all textiles are made of cotton, making it the most important source of natural fiber to mankind. Cotton is also the number one row crop in our state. Our group conducts research on developing novel cotton germplasm and breeding strategies to accelerate the improvement of lint yield, fiber quality, and resistance to diseases. Because cotton has a very narrow genetic diversity, we are particularly interested in exploring interspecific introgression as a source of useful new gene combinations in our breeding program.
Faculty Contact
Cucurbits
The UGA Cucurbit breeding program integrates traditional breeding techniques with genomics and modern selection and phenotyping methodologies to improve disease resistance and traits related to consumer preference in watermelon, pumpkin and squash germplasm.
Faculty Contact
Finger millet
Finger millet is a staple cereal in eastern Africa and southern India. The main constraint to finger millet production is blast disease. We are developing genomic resources for both finger millet and the blast pathogen and are exploiting the generated tools to study the genetic diversity of host and pathogen and to identify chromosomal regions and genes associated with traits of agronomic interest. We work with breeders in eastern Africa to ensure knowledge transfer to breeding programs.
Faculty Contact
Plant Germplasm Resources
Germplasm is the foundation for crop improvement, providing genetic diversity for desirable traits such as high yield, biotic and abiotic stress resistances, nutritional quality, and climate resiliency. The USDA National Plant Germplasm System conserves > 600,00 accessions of food, feed, fiber, ornamental and other crops. The Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit on the UGA-Griffin Campus conserves > 100,000 accessions from > 1600 spp., including sorghum, peanut, sweet potato, vegetables, sub & tropical legumes, warm-season grasses, cowpea, annual clovers, industrial crops, and their crop wild relatives.
Faculty Contacts
- Karen Harris-Shultz (USDA)
- Shyam Tallury (USDA)
- Melanie Harrison (USDA)
- Ming Li Wang (USDA)
Muscadine
Muscadine grapes are a native North American fruit crop which are one of the few fruits well-adapted to growing the humid Southeastern U.S. The University of Georgia has been involved in muscadine grape breeding for over 100 years, and has produced some of the industry’s most important cultivars. Our breeding program continues this tradition while incorporating genetic and genomic research to move muscadine breeding into the 21st century.
Faculty Contact
Ornamentals
Landscape plants have functional and aesthetic impacts on the environment that are economically important. In 2022, ornamental horticulture was the #5 commodity group in Georgia. Over 190 ornamental cultivars have been released or licensed from UGA breeders in the past two decades. Ornamental breeders develop new cultivars with wide ranges of environmental adaptabilities, pest tolerances, and improved ornamental traits using traditional breeding and molecular tools.
Faculty Contacts
Peach
Georgia is known historically as the peach state. Peach breeding at UGA started in 1986 as a cooperative regional effort between the USDA and UF. Its main goal was to develop new peach and nectarine cultivars adapted to the lower coastal plain of the Southeast. Currently, we continue with that tradition plus have moved to introgress unique traits from south GA into the Middle Georgia germplasm.
Faculty Contact
Peanut
Georgia leads in peanut production with ~50% of the US peanut supply grown here. The peanut breeding effort at UGA began in 1931. Since then, research in peanut genetics at UGA has grown to include breeders and geneticists with varying focus, from traditional cultivar development to breeding with wild relatives, molecular genetics, genomics, and high throughput phenotyping. Our peanut-focused faculty are working toward modern solutions for peanut growers, shellers, manufactures, and consumers in Georgia and beyond.
Faculty Contacts
Pearl Millet
Pearl Millet (Cenchrus americanus) is one of the most drought tolerant cereals, grown primarily in the semi-arid tropics for its nutritious grain consumed as food and feed. In the US, pearl millet is mainly used as a forage. Our research has encompassed the generation of dwarf forage hybrids, cloning of a dwarfing gene, and introgression of apomixis from wild relatives. The genomes of pearl millet and several wild apomictic relatives have been sequenced, providing the opportunity to explore genome structure evolution across this cytologically and phenotypically diverse genus.
Faculty Contacts
Pecan
Pecan is the most important native North American nut crop, and Georgia is the leading pecan producing state. Our program operates an active conventional breeding program to meet the needs of the industry. We are also at the forefront of genetics and genomics research aimed at making our breeding efforts more successful. We are particularly interested in the genetic control of resistance to the fungal pathogen Venturia effusa which causes pecan scab.
Faculty Contact
Potato & root crops
Potato is the world’s third most important food crop and the Buell lab is part of the USDA SCRI Potato 2.0 project that is developing potato as a diploid, F1 hybrid crop. Sweetpotato is an important crop in the southeast U.S. and Buell is involved in the SweetGains project focused on modernizing sweetpotato breeding methods to improve genetic gains in this key food security crop.
Faculty Contact
Soybean
Soybean is the world's largest source of animal protein feed and the second largest source of vegetable oil. Our research is focused on the development of new soybean cultivars using cutting edge methods, advancing technologies for genetic engineering and genome editing, and understanding the molecular basis of plant-nematode interactions emphasizing soybean cyst and root-knot nematodes, and training future scientists in plant breeding, genetics, biotechnology, and nematology.
Faculty Contacts
Switchgrass & bioenergy crops
Lignocellulosic biomass from non-food crops can be a source of renewable biofuels and bioproducts that reduce reliance on fossil energy and provide environmental and ecosystem benefits. Research is underway to establish new technologies for feedstock development, increase switchgrass yield and biomass composition, enhance sustainability and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress using genome editing, and combined approaches of field evaluation and genomic selection.
Faculty Contacts
- Ali Missaoui
- Katrien Devos
- Wayne Parrott
- Bill Anderson (USDA)
- Melanie Harrison (USDA)
Tomato
Our research focuses on tomato quality traits such as shape, size and flavor. We mine ancestral tomato accessions from south and central America and take a genetic approach to identify the developmental and biochemical pathways that changed during the domestication of the vegetable. The cloning of the underlying genes enables breeders with tools in selection schemes for varietal improvement.
Faculty Contact
Turfgrasses
Since the first release in 1952, the Tift-series of bermudagrasses have achieved global recognition for their use on lawns and sport fields, including the Summer Olympics, World Cup Soccer, and the Super Bowl. Breeding efforts have since expanded to include seashore paspalum, tall fescue, and other turfgrasses, and are complemented with cutting-edge genomic analyses to determine the genetic basis of key traits.
Faculty Contact
Wheat
The UGA Small Grains (mainly wheat) Breeding and Genetics program at UGA aims to integrate classical and modern technologies to conduct breeding and research to develop improved wheat cultivars/germplasm adapted to Georgia and the US Southeast (SE) regions to meet the needs of wheat/small grain producers and industry needs. While the breeding effort is rooted in classical methods, novel techniques such as genomic selection and marker-assisted breeding tools are being intensively implemented to achieve our goals.
Faculty Contact