Cassie Palmer, Complex Biosystems graduate student, demonstrates the proper way to water pea shoots planted in lunar soil simulant to Dawes Middle School students.
UNL graduate students team up with LPS to “Plant the Moon”

Lunar soil research project part of the Grand Challenges Initiative

It may have been 30 degrees out with eleven inches of snowfall on the ground from the day before. But in the Nebraska Innovation Campus greenhouse, it was in the mid-70s — the perfect temperature for plant experiments.

That day in February, students from Dawes Middle School were learning how to set up an experiment for success. The topic in question: seeing how pea shoots would fare in lunar soil.

Read UNL graduate students team up with LPS to “Plant the Moon”


Katja Koehler-Cole
Cover crop research project uses phenotyping to bolster data collection

In the winter, Nebraska cropland has a lot of untapped potential. Only about 4% of farming acres in Nebraska use cover crops, according to Katja Koehler-Cole, soil health management extension educator for the Eastern Nebraska Research, Extension and Education Center (ENREEC).

“There’s lot of possibilities, but not a lot is known about the different species you could use, or the differences in varieties of different species,” she said.

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Musa Ulutas stand in lab
Graduate student works on project to image maize roots

Most crop imaging studies focus on what grows above the ground, like leaf angle and plant height. Agronomy & Horticulture graduate student Musa Ulutas is doing a deep dive on corn characteristics by working on a project to image corn roots.

 He decided to take this novel approach while working in a lab run by Jinliang Yang, Agronomy & Horticulture assistant professor. Musa is part of a research team working to analyze the corn microbiome to determine reaction to varying levels of nitrogen in the soil.

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Pascal Izere launching a drone in a field
Research Team Seeks to Accelerate Triticale Breeding Processes

A University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student team is working to speed up breeding processes by using high-throughput phenotyping.

Catherine Mick, graduate research assistant with the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, said this could help fix a “bottleneck” in the triticale breeding program she works in. Triticale is a man-made wheat-by-rye hybrid species used for grain, forage and cover cropping.

This issue comes from the time it takes to evaluate and select the best genetic crosses of the crops breeders are working with.

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Katarzyna Glowacka
Glowacka to use phenotyping to research cold-weather resistance in miscanthus

A University of Nebraska-Lincoln biochemist is using plant phenomics techniques in novel ways to further her research.  

Katarzyna Glowacka, assistant professor of biochemistry, received a five-year, nearly $1.4 million grant from NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development Program. She will delve into the role non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) plays in enabling miscanthus to fend off cold-induced damage.

Read Glowacka to use phenotyping to research cold-weather resistance in miscanthus


 Jinliang Yang
Plant Phenomics Community Feature: Jinliang Yang

Seven questions with Jinliang Yang

Jinliang is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture.

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Katherine Frels
Plant Phenomics Community Feature: Katherine Frels

Katherine Frels is an assistant professor of the Department of Agrononomy and Horticulture.

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Rubi Quiñones
UNL Ph. D candidate earns 2022 NAPPN Graduate Student Award

Collaborations raise everyone up. This is something computer engineering Ph. D candidate Rubi Quiñones has learned in her time at UNL.

Embracing collaborative efforts is one of the reasons she was recognized at the recent North American Plant Phenotyping Network (NAPPN) annual conference in Athens, Ga., in February — earning the 2022 NAPPN Graduate Student Award for Research and Service.

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ARD Dean and Director Archie Clutter (left), Dipti Dev, Jessica Petersen, and Hiep Vu
Junior faculty earn awards for excellence in research - 2017
The Agricultural Research Division of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln presented awards to two assistant professors on March 1st, in recognition of excellence in research.

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Hongfeng Yu (from left), Yufeng Ge and Harkamal Walia
NSF grant to support development of new phenotyping instrument
With support from a National Science Foundation grant, University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers are developing a new tool that will help them better identify plant characteristics that are critical to improving crop performance. The three-year, $534,194 grant will be used to develop an instrument that will improve capacity, sensitivity and throughput for plant phenotyping.

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