Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Seed World: Favorite film? Ellen Leue: It depends on my mood. I love intriguing, complicated movies like “Memento” when I am not going to be distracted. If I am feeling creative, anime/ fantasy, like “Spirited Away” is what suits. If I just want to forget the world and laugh, “LA Story” or “Toy Story 3” might be on Love of Vegetables PanAmerican Seed’s vegetable crop director Ellen Leue chats about her career choices, why she loves to eat peppers, and what she’s got lined up on her Netflix queue these days. the program. Hmm, I think I will put “Toy Story 3” on my Netflix queue right now … SW: Why vegetable breeding?  EL: My godmother had this fantastic place in Massachusetts, 200 acres of woods and streams, sitting on the biggest piece of land non-traversed by road in the state. There, I was allowed to run wild from an early age, and learned to love nature.  My grandfather was a doctor, and we’d take walks and collect samples of just about anything — rocks, bugs, plants — and look at them under the dissecting scope, seeing their hidden beauty. My grandmother was a great gardener with big perennial flower beds and a huge vegetable garden. I visited them often and stayed one whole summer. When I got to Cornell University, the class that challenged and fascinated me most was genetics, but I was also drawn to growing things. I got myself an adviser in the department of vegeta- ble crops. The turning point for me was after my sophomore year when I got a summer job under the famous vegetable breeder, Henry Munger. I realized I could combine all the things I loved into the profession of plant breeding — and never looked back. SW: Favorite vegetable? EL: I like every veg- etable I have tried but I’d have to say peppers are my favorite. They have a surpris- ingly wide variation in flavor. SW: What do you want people to know about vegetable breeding?  EL: That there is still a lot to be done! We can innovate tremendously, which was a surprise even to me. You’d think, with a cultivation history measured in millennia, that all the variation and types would be already available. But by recombining some of the best features of modern varieties, heirlooms and obscure genetic stocks, we can bring great new value. SW: What do you feel your biggest accomplishment is?  EL: Probably seedless peppers (from seed), which we are beginning to trial with growers. This was a very challenging project from a genetics and testing standpoint. We had to work with a very tricky source of cytoplasmic male sterility, a natural variation found in the 1950s in India, and combine it with parthenocarpy (the development of a fruit without prior fertilization). Dealing with traits that are normally invisible when you have to make the selection — like parthenocarpy, or restorer genes — is always cumbersome. SW: Top 3 goals for 2017?  EL: No. 1 is to use our proprietary seed technology to create uniform mixed salad pellets for the hydroponics industry. No. 2 is to get the real-world grower to test of our seedless pepper prototypes ... No. 3 is to determine the market poten- tial of a super sweet cherry tomato we have, that has a completely new texture and a great disease resistance package for protected culture. A fourth goal, if I may add one, is to work more closely with our university partners and bring some of their fantastic work to market. There are some really creative public breeders out there whose goals are closely aligned with ours. SW 58 / SEEDWORLD.COM FEBRUARY 2017