Why Study Plant Breeding and Genetics?

A really nice piece in the Huffington Post by Kevin Folta evangelizing about future careers in plant breeding (link).

I like the way he describes genetic markers and marker assisted selection:

"The trick is to use DNA-based landmarks that physically travel through generations in parallel with the trait of interest. A simple DNA test, much like those used in forensic science, tells a breeder if a seedling has a high likelihood of presenting a coveted trait upon maturation. These tests allow breeders new ways to identify the most relevant parent plants, and eliminate non-candidate offspring at the seedling stage, long before valuable time, labor, acreage, fertilizers, and water are invested."

When I was an undergraduate senior, we had a speaker working on their PhD from UC Davis visit WKU to discuss their work in quantitative genetics. That was the first time I realized that there was lots of opportunity and very exciting work that could be done outside the lab, as genetics and crop improvement can be as much a statistical and quantitative science as a lab science. In other words, not all of the cool jobs were being taken by PhDs in molecular biology. As Kevin states:

"While mastery of molecular biology techniques is not required, modern breeders need to be conversant in the technologies, and excited to integrate with collaborators. A modern breeder will have strong skills in statistics, and even computational prowess."

This sounds a lot like a data scientist with domain expertise in plant breeding and genetics. From this angle there seems to be tremendous opportunities with the convergence of big data and genomics. While I did not pursue a career in plant breeding, I have leveraged my quantitative training in agronomy including experimental design and statistical genetics blended with econometrics and programming to advance my career in healthcare data science.

Think about the combination of genomic markers, plant 'wearable' sensors, remote sensing, and other precision ag data sources. Very exciting work for all involved.

Dr. Folta is an excellent evangelist for crop genetic improvement and science communication.  I highly recommend checking out his podcast Talking Biotech where each week he or Dr. Paul Vincelli from the University of Kentucky discuss agricultural and medical biotechnology.

Related: QTL Analysis and Marker Assisted Selection