A community of Borlaug scholars is growing at Texas A&M University, proving how effective the scholarship program is at mentoring young plant scientists and making for a better plant breeding profession.
The Borlaug Scholarship strengthens the plant breeding profession by helping support attendance of future leaders at the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) annual meeting.
Catherine Danmaigona Clement, Fabian Leon and Jeewan Pandey are all Borlaug scholars and have come to play an important role at the university, where they are either pursuing a degree or have joined the research staff after completing their Ph.D.
For Leon, the chance to network with other experienced plant breeders at the NAPB annual meeting was a big reason he applied.
“There’s a lot of other great plant breeding universities and people in industry that are a lot smarter than I am, who I knew I could learn from. So, first and foremost I really want to have my name on their radar. Secondly, I want to be able to rub elbows with them because that’s why the NAPB exists — the exchanging of scientific knowledge,” says the Texas A&M sorghum breeding program research assistant.
Clement is a Ph.D candidate at the university, working on cotton breeding. She says living out the legacy of the scholarship’s namesake, who was the father of the Green Revolution, was a big reason she originally applied for the scholarship.
“I have a very strong passion for plant breeding and crop improvement. Growing up in Nigeria, my last name literally means “the son of a farmer.” Throughout my Ph.D, I set out to not only improve and gain skills in plant breeding, but to also carry on the legacy of Norman Borlaug.”
For Pandey, PhD graduate in horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M, being a Borlaug scholar provided him with many valuable networking opportunities to help begin a successful career as a postdoc.
“Being a scholar actually helped me have a picture in my mind as to where my career would go. This scholarship has helped me accomplish my current goal as a postdoc, and also prepared me to move to my next journey as assistant professor and eventually it will lead me to a successful professional career in the plant breeding sector,” he says.
As part of the Borlaug Scholarship program, scholars are paired with a mentor who works with them to talk about their career options and help guide them along that path.
“It’s really amazing that there are those champions out there, who know the lay of the land, willing to be very generous with their personal stories. They can kind of help you make life decisions. Because, you know, being in those five to 10 years of your early stage career, you’re making key decisions that will affect the course of the rest of your life, essentially,” Leon says.
Of course, the scholarship wouldn’t be possible without sponsors like Texas A&M. Wayne Smith, plant breeding professor at Texas A&M, says it doesn’t take a lot of money for a small company to support a Borlaug scholar and get their name circulated among other plant breeding companies.
“In the same vein, small companies want to become big companies, and so it’s a great opportunity for them to gain some significant recognition,” Smith says.
For info on the Borlaug Scholars program visit the NAPB website.
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