JANUARY 2019 SEEDWORLD.COM / 79 the ancestry of short-season maize. • Derek Potratz, University of Wisconsin, Madison, studies the effects of strip-tillage, fertilizer placement, row spacing and in-furrow fungicide on soybean seed yield. • Lindsay Chamberlain, University of Wisconsin, Madison, researches grain yield response to crop rotation and cover crops. Additionally, students from the Chicago Agricultural High School were in attendance and had the opportunity to display posters and talk about what they were doing and learning. Student Video Bridges Knowledge Gap Another student recognition was that of Kevin Falk who was announced as the winner of this year’s Better Seed, Better Life video contest. Falk is a doctoral candidate at Iowa State University focus- ing on soybean breeding. The 2018 contest theme was “Rumor Has It.” University students, including graduates and undergraduates, were asked to create videos to help set the record straight on a common miscon- ception or myth associated with the seed industry and/or plant science. The video contest was held in partnership with the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) and the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America , better known as the Tri-Societies. Falk’s grand-prize winning video addresses the misconceptions around farmers’ ability to save seed, patenting life and seed, and big agriculture. You can watch the video at seedworld.com/better- seed-better-life-falk-video. Falk, who grew up working on research farms near his home in Carman, Manitoba, is one of five doctoral students in the Singh soybean breeding and plant phenomics group. His research looks at harnessing technology to develop high throughput phenotyping platforms to advance plant breeding. Falk was also named as the 2018 Borlaug Scholar at NAPB’s annual meeting. One of Falk’s projects includes conducting a genetic scan of the diversity of root system archi- tecture. For this, Falk developed and improved research methods, as well as deployed advanced statistical tools including the integration of com- puter vision and machine learning to develop new insights that eluded previous studies on a complex set of traits. Studying how different management practices impact soybean yield, Derek Potratz, a student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, shared his research with Jonathan Shaver of Envision Partners. Kevin Falk, a doctoral candidate at Iowa State University, is recognized for his first-place ASTA Better Seed, Better Life video, debunking myths about the seed industry.