The National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) established the NAPB Borlaug Scholars travel grant and mentoring program in January 2018 to attract and encourage plant sciences-oriented students to become professional plant breeders. NAPB is the best professional association in the USA for uniting plant breeders of all crops in one society.
NAPB held its annual meetings last August at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, GA with over 400 in attendance. This was record participation from a society with some 450 members. One third are student members. NAPB leadership consists of volunteer plant breeders who believe in “Improving Plants to Improve Lives”. Plant breeders attended from as far away as Ghana. The inaugural convention of the African Plant Breeders Association (APBA) in October gathered 421 plant breeders from across the continent of Africa and globally for their first formal convention. NAPB supports this new sister association with its similar goals to advance plant breeding globally, with impacts locally, regionally and globally.
Why is Plant Breeding so important that we need more professionals and that new societies are popping up to support public and private plant breeding? There are many reasons. Here are a few important ones. Plant Breeding can directly impact: Food Security, Food Safety, Quality of Life, Conservation of Natural Resources and Environments, Water Quality and Availability, Soil health, Climate Change and Peaceful Coexistence. Plant breeding is a powerful scientific process helping plants to adapt and change to meet our growing needs.
The tool bag for plant breeders has increased rapidly in both numbers of tools and sophistication of those tools. Global scientific teamwork is critical to addressing increasingly complex systems in the world of plant breeding. Becoming a professional plant breeder is more challenging than ever before. Starting early is hugely important for getting up to speed quickly. Plant breeding must continue regardless of other scientific breakthroughs. In fact, plant breeding must change and adapt more quickly. Indeed, it has! But, for a decade or more it was in serious decline. We were losing faculty, research fields, and other infrastructure, which led to a lower profile for the career of plant breeding. Bright talent was being drained from plant breeding.
Dr. Norman E. Borlaug warned us against such complacency in our ongoing campaigns against hunger. These new scholarships are intended to extend the Borlaug legacy and help reverse the decline of the mid-2000s for top talent coming into plant breeding. NAPB Borlaug Scholars are a bright spot in reversing this trend. In the first two years of the program, 20 undergraduate and graduate students have been supported to join NAPB and be mentored by our professional plant breeders. These students compete nationally for this honor. Their travel to be with our nation’s best plant breeders is supported through the Borlaug Scholars Fund. A campaign to match donations to the ASF/Borlaug Scholars Fund was branded the $GrowIt! campaign. It was announced in the fall of 2018 and re-opened in the summer of 2019. Through $GrowIt! donations are matched, doubling the value of most member donations. For student donations, the amount is tripled. To date the $GrowIt! campaign has matched $8,030 in donations. However, over $4200 remain available for matching incoming donations. Therefore, the $GrowIt! Campaign remains in effect and will match additional donations through the end of 2019, or until the matching funds run out. The matching $GrowIt! program is open to all NAPB members. Please make your donation of any amount today!
Here are some great examples of plant breeders “paying it forward” by supporting public plant breeding through the NAPB Borlaug Scholars program. A member donated $1000 and another $500 during the annual meetings! Just those two donations will support one additional NAPB Borlaug Scholarship. But, because these donations qualified for $GrowIt! matching funds, two additional students will now receive awards. A longer-term goal of the fund is to grow the contributions to the point that the fund will be fully sustainable from investment earnings in the future. We continue to need your help with that goal.
Another great example is one of this year’s Borlaug Scholar winners who won a small monetary reward in the poster competition at the meetings. He was so grateful for these opportunities that he is donating a portion of his poster winnings back to the NAPB Borlaug Scholars Fund. His donation will be matched 2x, tripling his generosity to benefit those that follow him. In addition, he reported inviting his NAPB mentor to campus to speak and was successful in setting this up for the benefit of his colleagues! And, he joined the Borlaug Scholars Committee to support the program in 2020!
One of the best examples is a graduate student that donated a small amount to the Borlaug Scholars Fund during the $GrowIt! campaign, motivated in part by the 2x match, but mostly by her love for plant breeding. After attending the annual meetings, she was so moved that she went back to campus and organized her plant breeding student colleagues to host a raffle in the department. The students raised $630, which she donated under the $GrowIt! match, for a total donation of $1890, more than enough to fund another Borlaug Scholarship! Well done!! Go NCSU Wolfpack! Thanks for the support!
We encourage readers to thank a plant breeder for improving plants. We see better plants all around us. We benefit daily from our plant breeders. A great way to thank plant breeders is to support their students. NAPB Borlaug Scholarships are 100% supported by donations. Please make a generous donation while $GrowIt! is available to match your generosity this giving season. You may donate at www.a-s-f.org/NAPB-borlaug-scholars-donations, if you are a NAPB member. If not a NAPB member, please contact Donn Cummings at donncummings1@gmail.com.
