“Genomic Selection: Essence, Applications, and Prospects” with Dr. Jianming Yu

Genomic Selection is a plant breeding innovation that aims to speed plant breeding by using predictions from a training model enabled by genomics and statistics to guide the breeding decisions. With around thirty years of history around this innovation, it was about time to develop a review on it. Enter Dr. Jianming Yu and his team of coauthors. This episode, we skate the surface of a topic that could go down for miles, covering key areas of genomic selection, what it is, how to use it, and where we can aim to go in the future.

Tune in to learn:

· How genomic selection was developed

· Why genomic selection should be seen as an innovation in rather than alternative to plant breeding

· Why growing out crosses still matters

· How AI could be integrated to further genomic selection

If you would like more information about this topic, this episode’s paper is available here: https://doi.org/10.1002/tpg2.70053

This paper is always freely available.

Contact us at podcast@sciencesocieties.org or on Twitter @FieldLabEarth if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for show topics, and if you want more content like this don’t forget to subscribe. If you’d like to see old episodes or sign up for our newsletter, you can do so here: https://fieldlabearth.libsyn.com/.

If you would like to reach out to Jianming, you can find him here:
jmyu@iastate.edu
https://www.agron.iastate.edu/people/yu-jianming/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jianming-yu-92b6617b/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/iowa-state-university-raymond-f-baker-center-for-plant-breeding/

Resources

CEU Quiz: Coming soon

Transcripts: Coming soon

CSA News article: Coming soon

Field, Lab, Earth is Copyrighted by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.

“The Nitrogen Value of Cover Crops” with Dr. Guillermo Marcillo.

Cover crops are known for their ability to provide economic and ecosystem services to farmers, including, for example, impacting soil nitrogen. But how much nitrogen, exactly, can cover crops add or remove and how do we find out? In this episode, Guillermo joins me to discuss his work collating research data to get to the bottom of cover crop nitrogen replacement values.

Tune in to learn:

· What a nitrogen replacement value is

· Why negative nitrogen replacement values are sometimes a positive

· Which cover crops have, generally, which nitrogen replacement values

· How nitrogen replacement values can be reverse engineered from existing data

If you would like more information about this topic, this episode’s paper is available here: https://doi.org/10.1002/ael2.70006

This paper is always freely available.

Contact us at podcast@sciencesocieties.org or on Twitter @FieldLabEarth if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for show topics, and if you want more content like this don’t forget to subscribe. If you’d like to see old episodes or sign up for our newsletter, you can do so here: https://fieldlabearth.libsyn.com/.

If you would like to reach out to Guillermo, you can find him here:
gmarcillo@wtamu.edu

Resources

CEU Quiz: https://web.sciencesocieties.org/Learning-Center/Courses/Course-Detail?productid=%7b9A6669B5-C497-F011-B4CC-000D3A599510%7d

Transcripts: https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/NjhjYWFkNTBhZDQ3ZGFjZGUyZjMxYmQ4ajBOeXVVX3ZKb2t5/o/VEMxMDIwODkyMDA5

Water working group at West Texas A&M University: https://www.wtamu.edu/academics/college-engineering/water-working-group/people.html

Practical Farmers of Iowa: https://practicalfarmers.org/

Precision Sustainable Agriculture: https://www.precisionsustainableag.org/

Field, Lab, Earth is Copyrighted by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.

“Toward sustainable compost use: Prediction of organic matter via smartphone image analysis” with Dr. David C. Weindorf

Compost needs to be regularly tested to ensure labels regarding organic matter, nutrients, and more remain accurate. However, getting compost tested is time- and cost-intensive. This episode, Dr. Weindorf joins me to discuss how developing a model to predict organic matter from cell phone pictures might make this process a whole lot easier.

Tune in to learn:

· Which factors best correlated with organic matter

· How the team collected 157 different compost samples

· How application can affect the acceptable window for success on accuracy

· What camera-related factors affected the methods and results

If you would like more information about this topic, this episode’s paper is available here: https://doi.org/10.1002/agj2.70121

It will be freely available from August 15-August 31, 2025.

Contact us at podcast@sciencesocieties.org or on Twitter @FieldLabEarth if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for show topics, and if you want more content like this don’t forget to subscribe. If you’d like to see old episodes or sign up for our newsletter, you can do so here: https://fieldlabearth.libsyn.com/.

If you would like to reach out to David, you can find him here:
dweindorf@georgiasouthern.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-c-weindorf-43875b110/

Resources

CEU Quiz: https://web.sciencesocieties.org/Learning-Center/Courses/Course-Detail?productid=%7b91295D26-E579-F011-B4CC-000D3A599510%7d

Transcripts: https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5ZTBjNDZjMjFjM2ZlZThkNTdhYmJiWEhIRXQ0eUl3WlRi/o/VEMwMzgxNjg4NTA4

Compost Research and Education Foundation: https://www.compostfoundation.org/

Agronomy Journal: https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14350645

Compost Science and Utilization: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/ucsu20

Waste Management: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/waste-management

Field, Lab, Earth is Copyrighted by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.