Plant breeders develop new varieties that are productive, nutritious, and adapted to a changing climate. By combining field-based evaluation and selection with the latest genomics technologies, plant breeders provide the world with better food, feed, fiber, and renewable fuel, and contribute to sustainable landscapes.
The following video, "How to breed plants, as told by students," is a first hand account of plant breeding projects being conducted on campus by undergraduate and graduate students at UC Davis.
This video, along with our archive found here, is part of the Student Collaborative Organic Plant Breeding Education (SCOPE) project to teach the public and the UC community about sustainable agriculture. Unlike most educational videos produced by the UC system, most of these films are student-directed. Our top priority is to educate viewers about sustainable agricultural practices and how adopting these practices could lead to real positive change. We do this by introducing the basic principles of a sustainable agricultural practice and demonstrating how this practice has been adopted by a student community. Through this model of showing-by-doing, we hope to inspire our viewers to be optimistic and proactive about making global food security a reality.
The SCOPE project was started in 2015, based on a pepper breeding project created by graduate student Jorge Berny on the UCD Student Organic Farm. We are continuing our work on this breeding project with funding from the USDA’s Organic Research and Extension Initiative. We hope to demonstrate that plant breeding is participatory: students and farmers alike can develop new varieties to suit their needs, not just seed companies. Improving a crop’s adaptation to specific growing environments is an essential part of sustainable agriculture: the better a plant variety grows in a particular farming system, the fewer inputs (i.e. fertilizer, pesticides, water, etc.) are needed to maintain high crop yields.