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18 SEEDWORLD.COM OCTOBER 2015 Dont judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Robert Louis Stevenson Today Ejeta is a distin- guished professor of plant breeding genetics and international agriculture at Purdue and serves as executive director of the Purdue Center for Global Food Security. J.C. Hackleman Once called soybeans greatest missionary J.C. Hackleman was responsible for explo- sive growth of soybean as a crop in Illinois as well as educating countless farmers on methods for increasing their yields. Born near Carthage Ind. in 1888 Hackleman received a bachelors degree from Purdue University and a masters from the University of Missouri where he would serve as instructor and assistant professor of crops Extension. Gebisa Ejeta worked to improve sorghum hybrids making them resistant to drought and the devastating Striga weed. His work has dramatically increased the production and availability of one of the worlds five principal grains. LaVigne is not the only one with stories such as this. Many in the industry have a friend in Owen Newlin. He remains committed to the cause and is a true cham- pion for the seed industry. Gebisa Ejeta Gebisa Ejeta born and raised in a one-room hut with a mud floor in Ethiopia had a mother who believed her sons future rested in a good education. Her insistence and Ejetas work changed the lives of sorghum farmers and millions of people in Africa. Ejeta worked his way through school and ascended through the ranks of Ethiopian universities. He went on to work with and be mentored by Purdue University sorghum researcher John Axtell and eventually earned his doc- torate in plant breeding and genetics from Purdue in 1974. While working at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Sudan Ejeta devel- oped drought-tolerant and high-yielding varieties of sorghum that saw yields more than double in that country. Later as a researcher at Purdue Ejeta developed another drought-tolerant sorghum variety that increased yields four to five times the national average in Niger. In the 1990s Ejeta con- quered the parasitic weed Striga that plagued African sorghum farmers. Identifying genes that conferred Striga resistance Ejeta and col- leagues developed varieties that kept the weed at bay and were adapted to different conditions that faced African farmers. Seed was distributed to farmers in a dozen African countries increasing yield as much as four times. Ejeta was also instrumental in developing structures that monitor seed certification marketing of hybrid seed and production standards as well as educating farmers about the use of fertilizers soil and water conservation and other modern agricultural technology. Ejeta is a 2009 World Food Prize laureate and received Ethiopias National Hero Award. He has served on boards and committees for the Rockefeller Foundation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Prior to the work of J.C. Hackleman soybeans were not a distinguished crop in Illinois. Thanks to him Illinois became a top soybean-producing state.